


First Steps

by Charamei



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (1963)
Genre: Episode Style, Gen, Kid Fic, Looms, three babies a toy screwdriver and a monster
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-12
Updated: 2011-07-14
Packaged: 2017-10-21 07:55:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 21,447
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/222784
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Charamei/pseuds/Charamei
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There's being born, and then there's being born into a world with no adults, no clothes, no food and a terrifying alien Thing upstairs. When their Looms birth them straight into the middle of an emergency, can Our Heroes muddle through?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> **Continuity:** Both uses and discards varying elements of  Lungbarrow. Should stand alone, though; don't be put off if you haven't read it.
> 
> Beta'ed by the amazing [in_lighter_ink](http://in_lighter_ink.dreamwidth.org) and finished thanks to the brilliant people over at [writethisfanfic](http://writethisfanfic.dreamwidth.org). Reviews are always appreciated; leave concrit, and I will love you forever.

A Loom is an amazing thing. It can take genetic material from one parent, two, six, from the Matrix if necessary. It combines genes, cleanses them of impurities and imperfections: new life from old, new life from none. It moulds hands and feet, and eyes and hearts and lungs. It can make them toddler small, or even smaller if it feels like it, or adult big, big children in big bodies, confused, unnatural, but just as well-made.

The one place where it has to cheat is minds: the creation of real people. It is for this reason, they say, that Rassilon created the Matrix. The Loom takes a little of this and a little of that, and a nervous tic from over there, blends, merges, confuses, assigns an 'I' and a self-identity, folds and pinches and pokes...

It is happening now, in this Loom. He is Rassilon-Millarn-Theden-Sampradaya- _Pandora_ ; the last sneaks onto the end like a breath, a bug in the coding that the Loom lets slip because all brains look like bugs to it... he is all of these people, and yet none of them, entirely himself and entirely unique in his sameness. It gives him information, next: his I and his House, his Chapter, read, write, walk, talk, basic physics, music, house-training... he is brown-haired and brown-eyed, he is a child, he is warm and snug and suddenly aware of the warmth and snugness. As soon as he knows how warm and comfortable he is here, it's time to go.

His golden cocoon lowers him gently, stripping itself away as it does so. His legs touch the floor while it still supports him, and he takes his own weight before the last vestiges of it fall away. His cocoon is only the tiniest part of the outer world. The Loom's roof is miles above his head (it seems miles, anyway, but then he knows he's only three feet tall), and a large, ominous door ahead of him opens with a hiss of pneumatic hinges. He hesitates, but the Loom comforts him, giving him that last encouragement even as it urges him to _walk forwards_.

He walks; it's not so far after all, really. Beyond the doors, mirroring his own situation, he can see another Loom and another boy walking into the world – this one shorter than him and blond, his walk more confident as he turns his head, trying to see everything at once.

They step from hard Loom floors onto tickly orange carpet at the very same instant; now they are only a metre or so apart, naked under stark lighting and dark, panelled walls.

The blond boy stares over the brown-haired one's shoulder, then turns to inspect his own Loom. "They're smaller on the outside!"

The brown-haired one doesn't care. He's far more interested in the weird hole in the blond's tummy. Forgetting the manners that he hasn't yet been taught, he points, and stares, and asks, "What's _that_?"

The blond-haired boy pokes a finger into it. "Don't know." He looks curiously at the brown-haired one's midriff. " _You_ don't have one."

"It looks like a snail," the brown-haired one says.

"You've never seen a snail!"

This is indisputable. "A wormhole, then."

"You've never seen one of those, either."

"Well, I still say it looks like one. So there!"

The argument thus effectively ended, the two boys stand in awkward silence for a moment, the blond playing idly with his stomach-snail. Suddenly, he looks up and asks, "How do they work, anyway?"

"What?"

"The Looms." Before the brown-haired one can respond his brother ducks around the side of his Loom. "Hey, there's a door!"

"I don't think you're meant to go in there," the brown-haired one says, even as curiosity drives him to follow. "We might get in trouble."

"With whom?"

He has a point, and they realise at the same time that nobody's here.

This shouldn't happen. There's meant to be someone waiting for a Loomling when they're born, even if it's only an attendant and not an actual Family member. They know this as perfectly as they know calculus, but now it finally registers that _each other_ doesn't count. There should be a grown-up here, too, and there isn't.

From inside the Loom there's a thump that might be caused by a Loomling sitting down quite heavily. The blond one says in a small voice, "Wonder where they are."

The room now seems an awful lot larger, and nowhere near as friendly. The brown-haired one glances at the door, hoping that someone will walk through and make everything all right, but there's no-one here. His Loom's doors are now firmly closed, forbidding any attempt to return to warmth and comfort. He shivers in the cold air, his skin beginning to rise in little bumps.

He draws nearer to the open Loom side-door. Inside, great white banks of consoles rise like mountains on all sides, broken only by an enormous window that overlooks the womb room below. The blond one sits cross-legged in the middle of them, staring up at the computers as though that will tell him everything he needs to know about how to operate them. His skin has also risen into bumps; he rubs his arms absent-mindedly as he ponders. The brown-haired one huddles up to him for warmth and for a moment they just sit, taking it all in.

"All of this, just to produce one person," the blond one says. His soft voice carries unnaturally in this still, silent world.

The brown-haired one peeps back at the door, but there is still nobody there. He wets his lips. "S'quiet."

"Yes," his brother agrees, and they fall back into silence for a moment before a great profundity occurs in the form of, "I'm cold. And hungry."

"Me too."

"I think..." The blond one looks at the door. His voice grows stronger as he makes his decision. "I think we should go and find someone. They can't really have abandoned us." There is a note of uncertainty in this last sentence that he covers up with, "Besides, I want to know what it's like out there." He scrambles to his feet, pulling the brown-haired one with him, and begins to tow him towards the door. The brown-haired one tugs on his arm to stop him.

"Hold on. What if someone does come?"

The blond one stops dead, his eyes widening as he vocalises his brother's thought. "If we're not here, they might... they might leave without us."

The brown-haired one was really, really hoping that he wouldn't say it. An eternity of this is too horrifying to contemplate.

They instinctively know what to do. They reach for one another's temples, fumbling for a moment before their cold fingers find their marks. Their minds open; at once every thought and feeling becomes available.

He's been aware of his brother ever since he was born, but only in the same way as he's aware of all the other Time Lords out there in the big world; an ongoing chorus in his mind, pleasant and reassuring but above all impersonal. Now every one of his brother's thoughts is his thought, and he's twice as scared, twice as hungry, twice as cold. His – _their_ – tummy gurgles noisily In the same instant he sees the way his brother is burying fear with curiosity. He pushes further into the head-to-head to find out why, and finds that he's being scrutinised too; his brother is prying into the brown-haired one's own secrets. He pokes back hard, and the blond-haired one laughs with unexpected delight. This is fun. They've discovered a game.

"Contact," the brown-haired one giggles.

"Contact," his brother responds, and pushes his fingers further into the brown-haired one's hair.

For a few minutes they just play, messing about in one another's memories, reliving their first few minutes of life over and over; they work out how to make one another feel pleasure, and how to tickle and tease, and then the blond one accidentally does pain. The brown-haired one yelps. The shock yanks him out of his brother's head, reminding him of the cold air and the growing pain in his stomach. It refocuses them and they start to swap ideas, drawing from their limited pool of social understanding and knowledge.

They've never done this before and they keep stopping to play, so it takes them nearly five minutes to come up with the idea of the note. The blond one clambers up onto one of the mountainous consoles to retrieve paper and a pen, then they huddle on the floor. The blond-haired one dictates as the brown-haired one, who is beginning to shiver quite violently now, tries his best to write neatly with the too-big pen. He blots a few times, but his writing is mostly legible; then, as they admire their handiwork, it occurs to him that something is missing.

"We should sign it," he says.

His brother frowns at the note. "That means we need names. Anyway, I'm fed up thinking of you as brown-hair." He considers for a second, then adds, "I don't know who I want to be."

The brown-haired one doesn't know who he wants to be either; fortunately, his brother has a brainwave.

"We could name each other. I've got plenty of names for _you_."

This idea is incomprehensible to the brown-haired one.

"It'd only be temporary," his brother wheedles. "It's only a child name _anyway_. And once we find a grown-up, we can always change them... I think. Come on, else we'll be stuck here forever, and I'm going blue, look."

He holds out his hands. They are indeed turning an unhealthy shade of frozen blue, and the brown-haired one can't feel his toes, so he gives in and scrutinises his brother for something suitable to call him.

His eyes fall on the stomach-snail. "All right. I'll call you Snail."

Snail looks hurt. "That's not very nice."

"You've got one," the brown-haired one points out. "Anyway, you can always change it. You _said_."

"I suppose I did." Snail eyeballs him, then gives a wicked grin. "Flabbaduckarusa."

"Flabba-what?"

"You can always change it. Let's go, I'm freezing."

Pausing only to sign their new names, they make their way out into a harsh white corridor that sucks all the remaining warmth from Flabbaduckarusa's toes. It curves around an enormous central pillar, with doors set into the outer wall at regular intervals. Any one of those doors, he thinks nervously, could have food, clothes or even a grown-up behind them, but how can they ever hope to try them all? There are so many.

A sudden absence at his side indicates that Snail has vanished again, and he looks around to see his brother dashing down the corridor. He opens the first door he comes to.

"Oh," he calls, clearly disappointed. "It's just more Looms."

That doesn't make sense. Flabbaduckarusa catches up with Snail, his pace leisurely enough that he is able to notice and read the sign saying _Prydon Blyledge_ above the door, and peeks in. The Loom inside has an eerie stillness about it, much like the rest of the floor. He racks his brain to work out what's wrong, then it comes to him. "We're meant to be Loomed in the House, aren't we? Not in some factory."

"Maybe we were. Maybe they lost lots of Cousins."

"I don't think so. There's a name over the door –" Flabbaduckarusa looks back at the door he and Snail came from, just to be sure of the information in his head "– and ours is different."

Snail joins him in the middle of the corridor. His eyes go first to one sign, then another. "Oh."

"Prydon Lungbarrow," Flabbaduckarusa says, trying it out. "Not bad."

Snail wraps his arms around himself, sticking his hands underneath his armpits. "But, look, if there's more than one House's worth of Looms here, then where is everyone?"

His brother's right. Even more than there should have been someone to welcome them into the world, there should be someone here. A technician, a carer – anybody.

He just wants someone to pick him up and put him in some warm clothes and tell him everything's going to be all right. He wants to go _home_ , wherever home is.

From somewhere beyond the ceiling there comes a wave of bestial, alien fury. He and Snail cling to one another it goes on and on, drowning out even Snail's natural, friendly thoughts. Bile rises in Flabbaduckarusa's throat; Snail's face is ashen as he stares unseeing into the distance.

A dark, towering shadow emerges from around the bend at one end of the corridor. It's too big to be a grown-up, the wrong shape to be at all friendly, and as it moves it swishes in peculiar harmony with the fury upstairs. He and Snail stand transfixed for seconds that seem like hours before Snail recovers his wits and cries:

"Run!"


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "I don't want to be got out. There's nothing wrong with me. I'm safe here."

The Loomlings' tiny bare feet slap on the cold floor as they run. By the time they lose the Thing, Snail has gone from hypothermic to toasty warm. His lungs burn as he gasps for air, and his legs ache and strain; not only from the running but also because he hasn't quite got co-ordination sorted out yet. He's trying really, really hard not to trip over his own feet.

He pulls Flabbaduckarusa flat against the wall and sidles for a look back. The shadow belongs to a huge, faceless mannequin of dark wood. It's standing outside the room they were born in, scanning telepathically for them. An ancient memory from one of his psychodonors tries to surface, but as it does so the howl comes from upstairs again, and just as _that_ happens the mannequin notices him, turns, and begins to bear down on them. Snail grabs Flabbaduckarusa's hand again, and pulls him onwards. They run flat-out for nearly a minute, following the curve of the corridor. Doors pass in a blur as toasty warm becomes unbearably hot and sweaty; his breath comes in ever shorter, faster gasps and his feet sting from hitting the cold, hard floor. There are two things going thumpa-thumpa loudly in his chest that he thinks must be his hearts, and he's getting so dizzy –

He catches one foot on the other. The next thing he knows he's on the floor, every particle of him in agony. Flabbaduckarusa falls on top of him, sobbing a little.

The faceless mannequin is close behind them – they didn't even lose it! – and bears down on them, its hands reaching down to pick them up. Not a single muscle in his body will move right now. He squeezes his eyes shut as the mannequin picks him and Flabbaduckarusa up, and hopes against hope that it won't hurt either of them.

The mannequin's arms are surprisingly warm and comfortable as it glides along, its smooth, rhythmic movement and the spicy scent of its wood lulling him. He feels safe. Secure. Sleepy...

The Thing upstairs wails again. There's a new undercurrent to its alien fury; a sensation of such fear and misery that he jolts awake again,. In the mannequin's other arm, Flabbaduckarusa's already dozing happily. Snail kicks his brother. "Wake up!"

"Ow!"

"Sorry."

"You kicked me."

"I _said_ sorry." Before Flabbaduckarusa can complain any more, Snail adds hastily, "It's tricking us. Making us feel all safe."

Flabbaduckarusa gives him a long look. "Well, yes. That's its job, I think."

He knew it. It's some kind of evil Loomling-snatching robot monster: it's going to take them away and force them to be slaves, or experiment subjects, or make them eat nothing but vegetables for the rest of their lives and clean their rooms every day. They have to escape right now.

When he voices these views, his brother stares at him and says, "It's a Drudge."

That niggling little memory that has been trying to surface since he first saw the mannequin slides into place at last. Snail looks up at the Drudge, which looks down at him in its faceless way.

"Oh," he says, then, feeling that this isn't quite enough, "well, it's a scary Drudge, and how was I to know? And anyway, it doesn't count as a real person, so where are all the grown-ups?"

"It's probably taking us to them," Flabbaduckarusa says, and nestles deeper into the crook of the Drudge's arm.

The Drudge carries them down steep stairs that twist and turn endlessly downwards. The Thing's racket fades as they move away from it. Just as Snail thinks they'll keep going down forever, they stop and a door swings open into Paradise.

Paradise is a large bowl-shaped room, with warm green-blue walls. Its centrepiece is a long, low buffet table, piled high with fruit nuts and pastries; all around it, scattered rugs and cushions mingle with assorted toys, toolkits and chemistry sets. Still no people, though. If anything, the nursery looks to have been hastily evacuated.

The Drudge carries them down a set of steps and puts them down at the foot before gliding over to one of the many cupboards set into the wall. Snail is on his way to investigate the buffet table when it returns bearing two bundles of clothing, and hands them over.

Flabbaduckarusa sits down, opens his bundle and begins to sort his clothes carefully. "Yes, it's definitely evil."

"Shut up," Snail says, and rips his bundle open. He's colder than ever now that he's no longer exerting himself, and he doesn't think he can bear it another minute. They've only got one set of things here; not even nightclothes, just something to wear until someone arrives to take them home. _If_ someone arrives to take them home.

The clothes fit perfectly. He wonders about that, until he finds the tag sticking out of the bundle's wrapping and observes that it has the same identifier on it as his Loom. They must have been tailored to his genetic code. This is worse than when they were just wandering about on the upper floors, cold and scared. The grown-ups have gone to great lengths to make this nursery perfect. They clearly weren't _meant_ to be abandoned, and yet they have been. Whatever that Thing is upstairs, it's scared away a whole building full of Time Lords...

The Drudge has retired to a station at the foot of the stairs, apparently content to wait for new instructions. Snail goes over to it and, unsure how to get its attention, knocks on its skirt. It angles its head down towards him.

"Please," he says, "do you know where all the grown-ups are?"

The sensation he gets from it is overwhelmingly negative.

Snail sighs. "Never mind, then. Thank you."

"There's a console over there," Flabbaduckarusa says, and takes a plate from the buffet table. "We might be able to – hey, they've labelled all the food so we know what it is! That's considerate."

Snail hurries over to grab a plate. The food _is_ labelled; not only that, but there are laminated handouts showing cross-sections of the various fruit and vegetables, and someone's left an open copy of _The Chemical Composition of Your Body: A Loomling's Guide to Nutrition_ next to a half-emptied plate. Snail glances through its pages, then shuts it and fills his plate with as many different sweets and cakes as he can find.

They sit on the floor and guzzle their food down. By the time they finish eating, crumbs are strewn in a wide radius around them, there's icing on Snail's nose, and Flabbaduckarusa has sticky magenta juice all around his mouth and even, mysteriously, in his hair.

Flabbaduckarusa yawns widely; Snail follows suit. His legs still feel funny from all that running, and now that he's warm and fed and relatively safe, he can barely keep his eyes open.

All thought of getting news from the console forgotten, the two brothers curl up into a sticky, crumby mess and fall fast asleep.

/\/\/\

Snail wakes with a panic-stricken jolt. Flabbaduckarusa's snuggling against him, gripping a tuft of Snail's hair so tightly that it hurts; Snail has to yank his hair out of his brother's sticky, hot palm before he can sit up, searching instinctively for the Drudge's telepathic signature. He can't sense it; he looks frantically about the nursery, but the Drudge isn't anywhere. It's completely gone. He casts his mind wider, but it's no good; the Drudge has disappeared into the mass anonymity of Gallifrey's collective subconscious.

Something else responds instead, and it's not the Thing. It's more friendly, and yet more scary; more natural, and yet it terrifies him on a deep, animal level that he's vaguely aware real Time Lords pretend not to have. It's in so much _pain_! It's screaming and screaming, and it's that screaming, Snail realises, that woke him up. Someone's got to go and get that other Loomling, _now_. Snail scrambles away from Flabbaduckarusa, apologising silently when his brother whimpers and curls into a tight little ball, and hurries over to the first piece of blank paper he sees, on one of the nursery tables. The note that he writes is barely legible, but he's too frightened to care; he drops it on Flabbaduckarusa's head and runs up the nursery steps.

Abruptly, the screaming stops. Snail freezes in the doorframe. What's happened? Someone screaming like that wouldn't just stop, would they? Unless... unless that's where the Drudge went. But what if it didn't? What if the Thing got the Loomling? He can't just not go because the Loomling might be all right now. He takes one more step, and the nursery door swings smoothly shut behind him.

He begins to regret his decision almost instantly; the corridors are still empty and cold, and he only knows that the screaming came from somewhere above him. He retraces the route the Drudge took to the stairs, but from the bottom they're huge square mountains rising into eternity. He'll never get all the way up there, he thinks, and finds an alternative close by – an internal transmat, for people too lazy or too old to use the stairs.

He stands on tip-toe to get at its computer. The screen shows a list of the last twenty transmats, and Snail's trying to change that when he notices something odd. The first seventeen transmats went out of the building, probably because of the Thing, but the last three came in: all three of them went to the seventh floor. That means there should be grown-ups in the Looming House, but he's never been able to sense them, so what happened to them?

Maybe it was the same as what happened to the other Loomling. He tries to set the computer to take him to the seventh floor, but the console has so many buttons on it. He's going too fast to be careful, and suddenly a trumpet fanfare blares out above his head; the Glorification of Rassilon. Snail scowls at the screen, reaching up to try again as its turgid strains assault his ears. He makes himself go slower this time, though he's desperate to get to the Loomling as fast as possible; he finds the setting, but before he can activate it he also sees a display of the status of the Looms in the building.

There are a lot of them: he guesses nearly a thousand, spread out across ten floors. The vast majority of them are marked 'IN STASIS'. As he scrolls down, he notices two blips, side-by-side in the list, marked 'CRISIS BIRTH'. Interest piqued, he keeps scrolling. Stasis, stasis, stasis... the list goes on and on. The very last one of all says, 'CRISIS BIRTH'.

It is on the seventh floor.

Slowly, needing to know, Snail scrolls back up the list until he can see himself and Flabbaduckarusa on it again. Sure enough, they were born on the sixth floor. He remembers the disgusting, alien rage of the Thing, and the way the Loomling was screaming, and the way none of the grown-ups who went up to the seventh floor has left, and he begins to sniffle. It's not fair; those people were only trying to look after the Looms, and now the Thing must have got them, and the stupid Looms have gone and dumped him and Flabbaduckarusa right into the middle of the mess and what are they supposed to do about it if a whole lot of grown-ups couldn't stop it, and he doesn't know what's going on or even really where he is, and it's all so big and empty, and his feet hurt and his tummy's starting to feel funny from all those sweets, and he wants to go home – wherever _that_ is – and the Thing's probably going to get him, too, and then Flabbaduckarusa will be all alone and it's _not fair_.

He hops onto the pad, squeezes his eyes tight shut and thumps the button far harder than necessary.

Snail arrives feeling faintly dislocated, as if he hadn't been supposed to move sixty-odd feet in under a second. When his head stops spinning, he uncurls and opens his eyes. A Drudge stares back through one brightly-painted eye. Its other eye, and half of its head, rest on the pile of splinters that once formed its body. Beyond it, he can see several more destroyed Drudges.

Shaking, he leans forwards to touch it, It is cold and unresponsive – dead. Snail pulls his hand away, but can't shake his gaze; he simply sits, staring forlornly at its shattered body, until there is a bang and the Thing howls.

He bolts towards the nearest door, skirting the Drudge corpses. The door resists his touch at first, but grudgingly swings open after an agonising half-second, slamming shut the instant he's safely inside.

The Loom room is still and peaceful, filled with the comforting hum of its Loom. The other Loomling isn't in here, but if Snail strains through the Thing's disgusting wails he can sense someone a few rooms over. Good. That means the Loomling is still alive, although Snail will have to go back out there to get to him.

He tip-toes around the corridor, darting between Drudge corpses and listening closely for the other Loomling's thoughts amongst the Thing's cacophony. He does his best to ignore the way the Thing makes his stomach churn, making himself go slowly and check every door. They all resist opening in the same way as the first one did.

Perhaps the Looming House is trying to help him: the right door opens easily at his touch, buffeting him with hot, stinking air, then closes as soon as he's inside. Unsure how to thank a building, Snail pats the wall awkwardly before following his nose towards the Loom. The vile air becomes hotter as he goes; he starts to sweat before he's halfway there, and the chemical stench sears his nostrils until he doesn't think he'll ever smell anything else again.

He pokes his head through the Loom's side-door. "Hello?"

There's no response. The tech room looks empty at first, but then Snail's watering eyes fall on a maintenance hatch in one of the consoles, and the the pair of chubby pink legs hanging limply out of it.

He calls again, louder this time, but the legs don't even twitch. It looks as though the Loomling's stuck; the only reason the hatch isn't fully closed is that it's obstructed by his middle, and as Snail gets closer he thinks he can see glowing cables snarled up around the Loomling's top half, inside the Loom. The Loomling isn't moving at all. Snail wonders if he's even breathing.

Reaching the hatch, he stands on tip-toe, trying to see through the gap to the Loomling beyond. The air inside the Loom shimmers with heat; the smell makes him cough and retch. All he can see of the Loomling before he has to withdraw are patches of dry, saggy skin and lank dark hair, lit dimly by the golden glow of the cabling.

Tentatively, he reaches up and touches a foreleg. It's far too hot and sticky with half-dried sweat, and it _jerks_. Snail jumps away in shock, then realises that this means the Loomling is alive and grins a bit in relief.

"You _are_ all right." He gets no response. The Loomling's foot swings to rest in the same position as it held before. "Well, that's rude!"

Still the Loomling doesn't reply. Snail jabs the leg again, and once again it kicks in reflex. "Look, I know you're awake because you kick me every time I do that." He jabs again for good measure. "I came all the way up here just for you, you know."

Silence. Beginning to get cross, Snail pokes the Loomling hard again, and again, and again, all over his legs and bottom. It's easy to avoid the kicks, because they're always timed exactly the same, so he's surprised when they stop coming and a hoarse voice from inside the Loom asks politely, "Why are you doing that?"

The Loomling's tone only makes Snail angrier. "Because you wouldn't talk to me!"

"Oh," the Loomling says. Then, in the same disinterested voice, "Have you been here long, then?"

"I said hello," Snail snaps.

"I didn't notice."

Snail sticks his tongue out at the Loomling's behind and flumps down on the floor next to the hatch, wiping his sweaty forehead with his sleeve. Some new friend _this_ is. It'd serve him right if Snail just left him here.

"I came because you were screaming," he says, a little sulkily. "I thought you needed help. I'm Snail."

"I wasn't screaming." For the first time, the Loomling displays emotion, but it's not fear. It's derision. "I'm fine."

Snail stares up at him, incredulous. He _knows_ it was this Loomling screaming – he recognises the thought patterns – and besides, the Loomling can't be fine. His skin's dry and saggy, like an old person's; there's an enormous, livid bruise across his middle from the hatch door; and he's got his head stuck right in that stinky, boiling Loom console.

"You're not even a bit hot?"

"Of course not. My Loom's looking after me."

"It looks more like it's killing you." The Loomling snorts in disbelief, so Snail tries a different tack. "How did you get stuck there, anyway?"

The Loomling hesitates, then admits slowly, "I don't remember."

Snail can't restrain the laugh that bubbles nervously out of his mouth. "You must; you can't be more than an hour old!"

"I don't," the Loomling insists, the first tinges of fear edging his thoughts. "I remember being scared, and something big, and then – I... I tried to get back into the Loom, but the doors wouldn't open, then I found the consoles and climbed in here instead..."

"You were trying to _get back in_?" Snail repeats, gruesomely fascinated.

"Yes. Well, I thought it'd be safer than being out there..." The Loomling begins to wriggle in the hatch frame, his fear entering his voice now. "Then I suppose I got stuck. I hadn't noticed that before."

"And then you screamed?" Snail guesses.

"No! Why do you keep saying that?"

"I heard you! And you're hurt. It's got to have been you, there isn't anyone else – look, there's a nursery downstairs that's safe. I'll get you out, and then -"

"I don't want to be got out." The Loomling's anger is a welcome change from his earlier politeness, even if it's just as unhelpful. "There's nothing wrong with me. I'm safe here."

Snail lets out another involuntary bark of laughter. What an idiot! Well, if he won't see how hurt he is, then Snail will just have to drag him, because he can't leave the Loomling here with all that bruised, saggy skin and this smell. He scrambles up on top of the console and button-presses with abandon until there's a whirr and the hatch down below slides open, releasing clouds of noxious smoke, then jumps back down again. When he's finished coughing and wiping his streaming eyes, he grabs the Loomling's legs and heaves.

He thinks he might be getting somewhere until the Loomling kicks him in the face. Pain bursts across his cheek and Snail staggers backwards, his hand going to the bruise.

"Leave me _alone_!" The Loomling shouts, his voice cracking under the strain. Snail, stunned, turns and walks away as real tears supplant the wetness in his eyes.

He's paying more attention to his smarting cheek and bruised ego than to where he's going, and doesn't realise that he's gone in the wrong direction until he runs into a dead end; the corridor is blocked by a free-standing set of white double doors, like nothing Snail has ever – no, wait. A memory, already hazy and fading, stirs. He _has_ seen something like these before. They look like the inside of his Loom, although there's nothing behind them; just six inches of doorframe and the closed doors, closed and flanked by machinery. Even to Snail's inexpert eye, the machines don't look right. All that cabling is supposed to be on the inside, and some of it's even broken open, leaking dense clouds of golden stuff.

With a familiar swishing sound, the Drudge – _his_ Drudge – glides out of one of the nearby Looming rooms. Snail is so relieved to see it that he dashes straight up to it as it pauses to lock the door and tries to put his arms around its skirt. They don't fit, but the comforting spicy smell of its warm wood still does its work. How was he ever scared of this?

The Drudge almost manages to express surprise, and leans down to pick him up. Snail backs away. "You've got to come," he says as it moves to grab him again. "Someone's been born on this floor, and now he's stuck, and..."

With an almighty crash, a nearby door splinters into nothing. Beyond it, Snail catches a glimpse of the carnage in what used to be a Looming room as someThing with black spines and oily green skin charges out and jumps. Its mouth opens to reveal rows of huge teeth which clamp around the Drudge's body and close, grinding through its body with ruthless inevitability. Cracks appear in the Drudge's body, spreading downwards, branching into sharp points; the Thing keeps chewing, and all Snail can think is how _big_ it is, and how _spiky_.

With one last sickening crunch, the Drudge's head comes off and disappears into the Thing's mouth. Snail's legs unfreeze; he runs for it, with no thought in his head but to _get away_. He barely recognises the transmat pad as he barrels past it, and it's only the realisation that if he keeps going then he's heading back _towards_ the Thing that makes him turn around. He falls more than jumps onto the pad, flailing wildly and the button and hitting it by pure chance. When he lands, he can go no further; he huddles into a corner of the new pad, and bursts into tears.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You're born cold, naked and hungry. And then things get worse.

Flabbaduckarusa is, for the first time in his life, completely alone.

What sort of bufflehead goes wandering off like that? Snail doesn't know where this other Loomling is, or where the Thing is. Snail doesn't know _anything_. He can't possibly have a plan; from everything Flabbaduckarusa has learned of his brother, he's reckless, impulsive and probably going to get himself eaten. And the Drudge is gone! Snail had better not have followed it.

How dare Snail just abandon his brother like this? They don't _know_ that it's safe in the nursery, only that the Drudge thought it was, and since the Drudge has left them to fend for themselves he no longer trusts its judgement. This nursery is huge and empty, and the only family he has is going to be eaten trying to rescue a complete stranger, and Flabbaduckarusa refuses, absolutely refuses, to let that happen. If Snail must get himself eaten, then it will not be because Flabbaduckarusa did nothing.

He's started crying without noticing it. He wipes his eyes and nose on his sleeve, and tries to think.

The first thing, he supposes, is to find out where all the grown-ups went. He hasn't seen any bodies, so they can't be dead, just absent. If he can find out where they went, then he'll know where's safe – and that's where he needs to take Snail. So where would grown-ups go if a Thing suddenly appeared and started eating their children? Somewhere safe, obviously. Somewhere not here.

Somewhere outside. He saw that sign – he climbs up the nursery steps and out of the door, and yes! A little way down the corridor, an 'Egress' sign points in the opposite direction to the stairs. He hesitates, but he's _sure_ the Thing's nowhere nearby, and if there's _grown-ups_ out there –

He wants to get there so badly that he almost breaks into a run several times as he follows the signs. The only thing that stops him is the knowledge that Time Lords don't run – but when a large pair of double doors comes into view up ahead, that doesn't stop him from sprinting the last hundred feet. He barely manages to stop in time when the doors don't open. There's a lever set into the wall next to the doorframe; after a couple of attempts, he manages to jump high enough to get hold of the arm, but it doesn't move with him when gravity takes hold again. He ends up dangling, holding on to it for dear life. He bounces up and down to try and get some extra weight behind it, but it's well and truly stuck; eventually he has to drop back to the floor.

Rubbing his aching shoulders, he glares up at the doors as though that will make them open. Then, unwilling to give up yet, he takes a run-up and shoves at them as hard as he can. They don't budge even an inch. Fighting back tears, he backs up to try again; that's when he sees that the yellow lock light at the top of the doorframe is on. He can't see any way to lock or unlock the doors from this side, so the grown-ups must have done it from outside. He bangs on the doors, but nobody answers.

If he can't get outside, then... then he needs to find out where they are from the nursery. He goes back there and gazes around helplessly until a blinking blue light catches his attention and his eyes alight on one of the consoles in the corner. Like everything else in this room, it's Loomling-sized and has an instruction manual lying on the chair next to it – but none of the other consoles has that blinking light. He doesn't know exactly what this one's doing, but the light means it's turned on. And if it's turned on...

He climbs into the chair, using the console as a prop on his way up. This simple touch wakes it; by the time he's fished the manual out from underneath his bottom and arranged himself neatly in the chair, he's looking at a whole array of blue lights underneath an expectantly blank screen.

There's so much he could do, and so little of it would get him any closer to Snail or safety. He flips through the manual, but can't find anything that looks useful. All the while the screen stares out at him, silently accusing.

"Well, _I_ don't know," he snaps, unable to take it any longer. "Aren't you a training console?"

"That is correct," the console replies. Flabbaduckarusa falls off his chair in surprise.

When he's picked himself up again he says, a little shakily, "Y-you're voice activated."

"Affirmative."

"Why?"

"The better to cope with the frustrations expressed by untended infants, the Council fits all nursery-level consoles with voice protocols."

"Oh," Flabbaduckarusa feels a little foolish. "In that case, do you know where all the grown-ups are?"

"No."

"No?!"

"There are approximately four hundred million adult Gallifreyans. I am a training console. I have neither the power nor the resources to track every single one of them."

"You mean... you want me to be more specific."

"That is an acceptable solution."

"Right." He frowns, trying to think through his request. "There should be grown-ups in this Looming House, but there aren't. How do I find out where they all went to?"

"Much better," the console says, and Flabbaduckarusa realises with a stab of indignation that it's also been programmed to _teach_ those untended, frustrated Loomlings. "I cannot trace individual personnel of this establishment. However, the evacuation is on the news. Would you like to see?"

"Yes, please."

"Then open your manual to chapter twelve, section beta-three, and follow the instructions given in the green-bordered box."

Flabbaduckarusa sticks his tongue out at it and does as he's told. At least the instructions are clear now that he knows what he's looking for: it's not long before the screen tunes in to an alien landscape, full of gigantic orange fluffs dozily grazing green flora under a pale pink sky. A grown-up appears, superimposed on the image. Flabbaduckarusa gives a little start; he was almost beginning to believe that there weren't any anywhere.

The man is talking about herbivores. He has one of the orange fluffs in captivity and explains its digestive system carefully, with the aid of diagrams, holographic models and a stepladder – but Flabbaduckarusa quickly stops listening and instead sits and watches him. He soaks up the man's calm, precise movements, the soothing, assured cadence of his words, the order in his thoughts. There's something so inherently _grown-up_ about him that Flabbaduckarusa almost forgets he's alone, at least until the man goes quiet to observe the orange fluffs nesting and the silence comes crashing back down.

He reaches for the tuning controls and plays about until he finds the news. The reporter is mid-report; it's only when he begins a new sentence that Flabbaduckarusa realises he's talking about the Looming House.

"– although critics of the scheme argue that this catastrophe was inevitable. A control team was sent into the building shortly after the time corridor formed; however, contact with them has been lost. It is believed that their stabilisation equipment became faulty or damaged, trapping them on the other side. Their communication equipment also appears to have been compromised.

"The Families of the birthed infants are clamouring for the lockdown to be manually lifted so that they can rescue their Loomlings. The Chancellery Guard has proven deaf to their pleas and cites the greater safety of Gallifrey as a whole, particularly as the Housekeeper reports that many of her Drudges have been –"

A wave of utter despair grips Flabbaduckarusa. He scrambles off his chair in panic, wondering who it could be – the cry is familiar, but he's never heard anyone so sad before. It's only when he creeps close enough to the door to hear the accompanying oral cry that he realises it's Snail, and runs out of the nursery without another thought.

/\/\/\

After the crash and Snail's panicked retreat, there is silence. The Loomling hangs on to Snail's cry for as long as he can, but soon even that is out of his range and there's nothing but the sound of his hearts thudding along to the Loom's song.

Why couldn't Snail hear it? It's so beautiful, so comforting. If he can only get back in, that song says, the Loom will look after him forever, happy and snug and warm –

– actually, too warm, and too cold, all at once. His top half is sweating and his bottom half, dangling outside the console, is shivering. The cables holding him in place are burning his arms and tummy, and they're not exactly holding him in the most comfortable position, either, his arms stuck out at odd angles and his head unsupported. He hadn't noticed it before, because of the singing, but maybe... maybe that was the point. Maybe all it knows how to do is to keep him from thinking too hard while he slowly dies of hunger and cold.

He begins to wriggle and kick in sudden terror of that idea, and the Loom responds by turning up its telepathic volume, calming his panic and dulling his senses again.

He remembers all the times the Thing roared and it helped him. If he starts to get scared or worried or angry, it calms him down, stops him from thinking. So whatever he does, he needs to do it calmly, and without moving about too much.

Right, then.

He wiggles one arm gently, testing. Pain shoots down it, but the Loom doesn't react as it did before. The Loomling waits, stifling, but still nothing.

He braces himself against the maintenance hatch, moving slowly and carefully, noticing that the pain comes mostly from where the cables are wrapped around his midriff. When he's in position, he jerks his right arm as hard as he can and cries out as agony blinds him for a second; together with the stifling air it's so overwhelming that he faints.

He comes round mere microspans later. His arm is hanging limply, no longer supported by the cabling, but it doesn't look like it did before he got tangled up in them. It's red-raw, with raised lines of blisters all along where the cables were, and where there aren't blisters the skin is shiny and raw. It hurts worse than before: when he looks at the cables he can tell the ones which were wrapped around it with ease, because flaps of dry, burnt skin are stuck to them, pus leaking from several half-blisters where they were once forming on his person.

He looks at his other arm, then twists carefully until his can see his torso. The blisters are all over those, too, and when he pokes experimentally at the cabling with his free hand he finds that it's stuck fast to his skin, held on by pus and swollen epidermis.

The Loom has tricked him even more than he thought: it held onto him and pretended to nurture him while all the time it was carving away at his skin, melting itself into him.

He wrenches his other arm free with a yell that starts off angry and ends up agonised as yet more of his skin comes away. This time the pain doesn't make him faint: it maddens him, and he tears at the cables binding his chest and stomach, ripping them off his skin one by one and oblivious to the damage he's doing to himself in the process. Finally his weight is too much for the hateful thing to bear and he pitches forwards into its belly, the hard floor bruising him and popping several of his blisters.

Unimpeded by his body, the hatch door begins to close. The Loomling howls in frustration and leaps at it, barely managing to grab hold of the ledge in time.

It's rough and sharp on his burned arms and torso as he drags himself out, pitching forwards into the technical room just as he previously pitched forwards into the console. The hatch slams behind him as he picks himself up and runs out of the Loom, not stopping until he's in the real world with only one door between himself and the Thing's corridor.

The cold air is balm to his wounds, though it hurts to move – or even stay still too long. He leans against a wall and glares at the door to his horrible Loom room until he's mostly stopped shaking.

Snail was right; it _was_ trying to kill him. He licks his cracked lips, but his mouth's so dry that it doesn't make much difference. His eyes itch; he'd give anything to be able to scratch them. Water. He needs water; it was so hot in there. Holding on to the wall for support, he makes his unsteady legs take one step, then another. Snail said there was a nursery downstairs. There must be something to drink there.

The piles of dead Drudges peter out as he works his way around the corridor, fighting a growing dull headache. Before he's got any idea where Snail came from, he comes across a Loom room whose door has been broken clean off its hinges by something. Just beyond that, there's a pair of double-doors and some machinery, and close by _those_ , a water fountain.

They've even put one of the nozzles at Loomling-height. A surge of energy propels him forward, past the open room. The air fizzes as he steps through a forcefield surrounding the machinery, and the next thing that matters is the fountain's cool, sweet water as it bubbles out of the nozzle. There's a pile of cups next to it, but the Loomling doesn't bother with them, just shoves his mouth into the stream and drinks until he feels sick.

Now that he's away from the Loom the Thing's thoughts crowd against his once more, blotting out Gallifrey. His skin crawls; he allows his wobbly legs to give out and huddles on the floor, hoping that he can get away from the Thing as soon as possible.

Get away and go where? He hurt Snail, and Snail was the only person who could have helped. What if Snail doesn't want to help any more? The Loomling will have to apologise lots and lots, and hope that Snail will let him tag along.

The Thing's getting closer, but it's so nasty anyway that he doesn't realise just how close until it gallops into view, its black spines bristling in fury. Fatigue gone, the Loomling jumps to his feet. He's not sure whether to hide or run for it, but before he can make up his mind the Thing runs into the forcefield surrounding the double-doors.

This time the forcefield doesn't just fizz the air. There's a series of violent cracks and the Thing stops dead, as though it's run into a wall. It cries out in pain, both orally and with a telepathic screech that feels like somebody's digging their fingernails into the Loomling's brain. That does it; as the Thing limps away from the forcefield, the Loomling flees into the open Loom room, intending to hide there until the Thing stops moving.

The place only ever contained the Loom, but all that's left of it – all _the Thing's_ left of it – is a mound of wreckage, splinters and gnarled, leaking cables. And there, half-buried in the middle of it, are the remains of the baby the Loom was built to hold.

 

/\/\/\

The exercises are simple arithmetic; easy to follow. Guilt and boredom combine to keep Snail's attention drifting; he's only up to exercise 5Γd.

He wants to go back upstairs, see if he can get the Loomling out, but Flabbaduckarusa won't let him leave. He says they should just stay here until the grown-ups come to get them out – but when Snail asked how long that would be, Flabbaduckarusa didn't know. That's another good reason to go back, as far as Snail's concerned. That broken machinery he saw must have been the gate the grown-ups set up to stabilise the time corridor. He and Flabbaduckarusa could _help_.

Exercise 5Γe has eight sub-parts. Snail takes one look at them before throwing his pen down in disgust. "I'm going, even if you're not," he announces as he looks for the cupboard the Drudge got their clothes from.

"But you can't!"

"Can too." The cupboard's too high for Snail to reach, but there's a bookcase under it. He grabs the bottom shelf and begins to climb.

He can feel Flabbaduckarusa watching him. "It's not _safe_. You'll get eaten like the Drudge."

"So might he!"

Flabbaduckarusa doesn't respond, but Loomlings are hopeless at disguising their thoughts. It's right there, plain as anything: who cares if someone else dies, as long as Snail's safe?

"That's horrible," Snail says. "Anyway, the gate's up there, and it's broken. I bet we could fix it."

"We're two hours old," Flabbaduckarusa says sulkily.

"We've got books, though." A title catches Snail's eye and he flings it from the shelf to make his point. "That one's about temporal restabilisation, see? And there's toolkits –"

"Loomling ones."

"– and I'm going whether you like it or not, 'fraidy-cat." Reaching the top of the bookcase, Snail climbs into the cupboard to check the tags on the bundles within. It doesn't take him long to find the one he remembers from the Loom upstairs; he pushes it out of the cupboard and begins his descent as it whumps to the floor.

When he reaches the ground, he turns around to find that Flabbaduckarusa has tidied away their exercise books and pens and is packing one of the nursery toolkits back into its box.

"I bet he's hungry," Flabbaduckarusa says, his voice wavering a bit. "Find something to put some food in."

/\/\/\

The baby's heavy. Its head lolls on his shoulder, and his hands and chest are covered with its blood. It presses against his burns and makes them hurt, but the Loomling keeps stumbling among the wreckage of the dead Drudges, hoping that one of them is on fire. You burn dead bodies. Everything else can wait.

None of the Drudges is on fire, and he doesn't know how to set light to one, and his arms are getting so tired. But he won't – he _can't_ – put it down. You burn dead bodies.

Even if he could find a way to make fire, he doesn't know what happens next. The Loom programmers evidently thought that explaining tombings was a job for grown-ups, not machines, and the Loomling wishes they'd been right, but at least he can do the basic thing, if he can only find some fire.

He thinks he hears the Thing coming and runs, huffing and puffing and careful not to let the baby's feet touch the floor, into the nearest Loom room – which turns out to be his own. The Loom's stopped singing to him now, but even so, the sight of it sends a shudder of fear through him, and he holds the baby even tighter, paying no mind to the pain from his burns.

His _burns_. The Loom burns things, burns _people_.

He swallows his terror and carries the baby over to the maintenance hatch. It's closed, just like it was last time, but he knows how to open it now; he just needs to get up onto the console.

Very gently, he sits the baby down next to the hatch, propping it up against the console and carefully arranging its limbs so they don't stick out at funny angles. Then he clambers up onto the console and flips the switch to open the hatch.

It opens with a hiss, and he slides back off the console to have a look. It looks different in there – neater, less broken. There must be an auto-repair at work.

That's worrying. If it only burned him because it was broken, it mightn't be hot enough for the baby now it's fixed. The Loomling stands on tip-toe and waves an experimental hand about inside it; it's probably hot enough, he decides, but he'd better hurry up in case the auto-repair makes it cool down.

He picks up the baby, struggling a little to raise it high enough, and tips it into the Loom, where it thuds to the ground. Then he climbs back up, closes the maintenance hatch behind it, and comes back down again. And that's it, done.

"Bye," he says, a bit awkwardly. "I'm sorry the Thing got you."

He doesn't really know what else to do, but it feels wrong to leave. So he sits there and waits until the stink and heat of the Loom are too much for him, then backs out as respectfully as he can imagine.

His mouth is dry again. He carefully shuts the door on the baby's tomb and goes to find the fountain.

The door to the corridor begins to creep open before he reaches it. Caught in the middle of the floor, the Loomling freezes. He's just thinking that whatever's behind the door doesn't feel anything like the Thing when a blond head appears in the gap, its owner holding his nose with one hand, and says with Snail's voice, "Oh, you got out! We brought you some clothes."

The rest of Snail bounces into view. He's a little shorter than the Loomling; his curly hair stands up in tufted clumps where there's something sticky in it; his mouth is ringed with sugar and there's a nasty bruise on his cheek. The brown-haired boy who follows close behind him, carrying a bundle, is only a little tidier.

That bruise on Snail's cheek is the Loomling's fault. He takes a step forward, opening his mouth to apologise, but the other Loomlings aren't so much looking at him as staring at his torso in horror. He looks down, and slowly remembers that he wasn't born with these blistered red bands all over him. He can't find the right words to explain; he's suddenly angry that he has to explain at all.

They're still staring as he grabs the clothing bundle from the brown-haired one's hands and, fighting back tears, rips it open. They keep staring all the time he dresses himself. It's good to have warm clothes on, but the soft fabric irritates his burns, sticking to the blisters every time he moves.

He'd rather run away and hide than apologise now, but he _did_ kick Snail in the face. He takes a couple of deep breaths, licks his dry lips and forces out, "Sorry I kicked you."

"It's all right," Snail says. There's an awkward pause. "Are you all right?"

"Fine," the Loomling lies, wondering if he dares to go off without them. "I was going to ask if I could tag along, but if all you're going to do is stare at me then I won't bother."

Snail squirms. Behind him, the brown-haired Loomling goes pink and looks away at last.

"Sorry," the brown-haired one says, and Snail ducks his head in agreement. "But you're all..."

"I told you he was hurt," Snail says, and glances sheepishly at the Loomling. "I didn't know it was that bad, though. Of course you should come with us if you want. Do you have a name or shall we call you Tagalong for now?"

The Loomling hadn't even considered a name. "Tagalong will do," he says, and Snail's face breaks into a wide smile.

"This is my brother," Snail says. "He's called Flabbaduckarusa."

"Only until we find a grown-up," Flabbaduckarusa says.

Something about the way he says it sparks Tagalong's attention. "You know where they are?"

Flabbaduckarusa nods. "They're on the other side of the gate." He explains what he heard on the news bulletin. "And Snail thinks we can fix it. We've got some books and a toolkit from the nursery."

Tagalong's not sure that fixing the gate will be as easy as Snail seems to think, but if it means they can find a grown-up then it's worth a try. "I've seen the gate, I think," he says, and goes over to the door to point. "It's that way."

Snail joins him in the doorway, looking up and down the corridor. "The Thing was over the other side when we came in."

"I think it still is," Flabbaduckarusa says as he picks up the bundle again. "Hurry up."

"There's a forcefield around the gate that it can't get through," Tagalong tells them. "We just need to get to there."

Snail nods and takes his hand, picking up the toolbox with the other. Tagalong takes Flabbaduckarusa's free hand and, holding tightly to one another, the three Loomlings make their furtive way towards the gate.

It doesn't look any different to how it did earlier. That's strange, Tagalong thinks, remembering his Loom, but before he can say anything Snail and Flabbaduckarusa stop just outside the forcefield,without warning. Tagalong follows their joint gaze to one of the Drudge corpses that litter the corridor. It was an old one – it doesn't even have a painted face.

With everyone holding hands like this, it's impossible not to hear the sudden muddle in their thoughts. Flabbaduckarusa's start and stop and start again, never quite coalescing into actions or even ideas, but Snail's worse. He's... stopped. The toolkit slips out of his grasp and clatters to the ground.

Tagalong's heartsbeat is so loud, he's sure the Thing will hear it. He tries to pull his hands away from theirs; Snail's grip has gone so limp that he doesn't notice, but Flabbaduckarusa whimpers and tightens his fingers around Tagalong's. Tagalong, fighting back tears that he knows aren't coming from him, wrenches his hand free and shoves Flabbaduckarusa away before it can get any worse. He pushes harder than he meant to: Flabbaduckarusa half-sits, half-falls down and dissolves into noisy tears.

"Oh, don't be such an infant," Tagalong snaps, "it was only a little push."

Flabbaduckarusa's crying too loudly to hear him. Tagalong takes a deep breath, trying to make himself calm down. The Thing's bound to hear them soon.

He goes over to offer Flabbaduckarusa a hand to get up, but the other boy folds in on himself as Tagalong approaches, sobbing into his knees. Tagalong doesn't think that forcing Flabbaduckarusa to stand up will accomplish much, so he instead tries, "Come on, the forcefield's right there," which doesn't have any effect at all.

As he cajoles and pleads, the unpleasant prickling residue that the Thing always leaves behind in his mind begins to grow again, slowly taking over everything else. In some ways it's a relief; he can't hear Snail's emptiness or Flabbaduckarusa's telepathic wailing any more. But it means the Thing is getting closer again, and that means they're almost out of time.

"Come on!" he roars at them, and gives in to the urge to grab Flabbaduckarusa's arm and haul him to his feet. "You pair of stupid, useless... _babies_!"

Flabbaduckarusa still won't move. Every time Tagalong pulls him into a standing position, he crumples again. The Thing's getting louder and closer, drowning out everything with its alien screams –

He hits Flabbaduckarusa so fast that he barely realises he's done it until he hears the slap and feels the sting in his palm. Flabbaduckarusa stops crying to stare unseeingly at him, but it's Snail who yells, "Don't you hit my brother!" and rushes over to get in the way.

"You do it, then!" Tagalong shouts back as the red mark begins to recede from Flabbaduckarusa's cheek. "You're both stupid useless buffleheads who won't even move and the Thing's coming and the gate's right there and I hate you!"

Snail's mouth tightens. He helps Flabbaduckarusa up, picks up the toolkit again and marches off towards the gate, his brother in tow. Tagalong hurries after him, but only because it's safe inside the forcefield.

Snail stops beside the gate and slams the toolkit down on the ground. "Open that," he says to Flabbaduckarusa, who complies as Snail climbs the gate console and jabs around until he happens upon the switch that opens the maintenance hatch.

"You'll never fix it," Tagalong says.

Snail, pretending not to hear him, jumps down again and gives Flabbaduckarusa a reassuring smile.

Tagalong doesn't like being ignored. "All right, _how_ are you going to fix it?"

Snail gives him a nasty look and thrusts his hand into the toolbox without even looking to see what he pulls out. "With this."

There's a moment of contemplative silence, then Flabbaduckarusa sniffs back a dribble of snot and says, "That's a screwdriver."

"So? Maybe it's got a screw loose."

"Maybe _you've_ got a screw loose," Tagalong says.

Snail ignores him and hauls himself up into the maintenance hatch, with Flabbaduckarusa steadying him. The whine of the screwdriver starts and stops again; despite himself, Tagalong glances around at the gate. Not a single thing has changed.

Hah.

"Did it work?" Flabbaduckarusa asks hopefully. Snail gives some response, but Tagalong doesn't care. He's sure he can come up with a better idea than waving a toy screwdriver around.

He leaves the two of them to puzzle over the maintenance hatch and makes a run for the bundle that Flabbaduckarusa dropped when he started crying. Hauling it back behind the barrier, he upends it; a few books and a tub full of food clatter to the floor.

Tagalong hasn't eaten in his whole life, and he was born ages ago. He peels the lid off the tub, pulls the books towards him and reads as he eats, ignoring the sounds of Snail and Flabbaduckarusa improvising with the toolkit.

His hunch was right. Like his Loom, the gate has an auto-repair mechanism built into it, but it's obviously not working. They just need to work out how to trigger it, or maybe it needs fixing. He hopes it's not too damaged.

He turns his gaze back to the Loom, rubbing his prickling head. The Thing still hasn't come into view, but it's close enough to be irritating his senses. Maybe it's got the sense to stay away from the forcefield after the last time, but he's sure that it'll try again – or worse, it might get into another Loom room.

They need the grown-ups back here as fast as possible, then, because he can't stop the Thing and neither can those two buffleheads. There was something in one of those books about a manual trigger for the auto-repair, in case the automatic bit gets broken... he starts off at the opposite side of the doorframe to Snail and Flabbaduckarusa, climbs onto the console and begins to methodically press every button and flip every switch that he can see.

There are dozens of them. He's about three-quarters of the way along the console when it begins to tremble underneath him, something inside it starting to grind. He jumps down and backs away; over the other side, Flabbaduckarusa yelps in surprise as the broken cable he was trying to tape back together twists out of his hands and fuses itself neatly in mid-air. Snail stares as it slithers past him into the maintenance hatch; then, at Flabbaduckarusa's instruction, he retreats into the middle of the corridor.

"I fixed it," he says smugly to Tagalong, who ignores him.

Now the whole floor's trembling. Surely that can't be the gate, Tagalong thinks, then realises the Thing is charging again just before it careens around the bend, looking decidedly the worse for wear after smashing into the forcefield last time. It's got a pronounced limp in one foreleg, and the way it's wobbling about, it might have hurt its head too.

It stops about a metre in front of the forcefield and, swaying slightly, begins to edge forwards. The Loomlings, forgetting that they don't like one another, cluster in the middle of the grinding Loom consoles.

"Are you sure it can't get through?" Flabbaduckarusa whispers.

Tagalong nods without taking his eyes off it. "That's how it got hurt."

A loud metallic clang makes them all jump, even the Thing. The gate's hatch has closed; the grinding in the consoles is replaced by the deep thrum of in-order machinery.

With a soft pneumatic hiss, the double doors that make up the gate slide apart, coming to rest in specially-made slots in the consoles. Between them the air is indigo, violet and blue, and thick with Time.

The Thing's spines bristle, and for an instant it looks twice its size before it settles and starts to snuffle cautiously at the forcefield again. Snail, just as hesitantly, steps forward to examine the gate.

"Careful," Flabbaduckarusa says, and is ignored by everyone.

Tagalong looks back at the Thing, now tentatively headbutting the empty air. It's on the wrong side of the forcefield; it should have been in here, then nobody would have died.

The forcefield generator is a small adjunct to the right-hand gate console, and only has a couple of buttons to itself – he supposes it's mostly programmed from the gate. He goes over to it and, before he can change his mind, presses both of them at once. The air fizzes and sucks inwards: the Thing lets out a high-pitched keen and wobbles backwards.

Snail beats a hasty retreat to Flabbaduckarusa's side. "What did you do that for? We were safe!"

"It came from there," Tagalong says, and points at the gate. "It needs to go back before it hurts anyone else."

"It might eat us!"

Tagalong shrugs helplessly. It made sense to him.

Snail's face softens. "I suppose it's worth a try. We just need to make it go through." He nudges Flabbaduckarusa, who's watching the Thing with interest. "Any ideas?"

Flabbaduckarusa blinks at him. "What?"

Snail rolls his eyes at Tagalong, who giggles.

They watch the Thing for a bit longer. It doesn't seem to have realised the forcefield has gone; it keeps headbutting the air and swaying towards the gate in tiny steps. Its face is oozing some sort of black substance that might be blood... or pus. Tagalong has no idea.

Snail's mind jolts with a sudden idea; before Tagalong or Flabbaduckarusa can ask for more information, Snail's creeping out into the middle of the corridor to retrieve something from the toolbox, then sneaking around to stand behind the Thing.

He catches Tagalong's eye. Snail probably thinks he's directing his telepathy solely at Tagalong, but Flabbaduckarusa looks up in response and the Thing grumbles a bit too. _If it comes your way, make a noise. We'll try to frighten it in._

" _Frighten_?" Flabbaduckarusa asks incredulously. Tagalong shushes him, though he rather agrees. It's better than doing nothing, isn't it?

Snail counts to three, then switches on the screwdriver he's got in his hand and begins to yell and jump about. The Thing, startled, bristles up and lets off another of those telepathic signals that makes Tagalong's stomach roll – then, to all their surprise, it begins to back towards the gate.

Snail keeps yelling and brandishing his screwdriver. Tagalong seizes the chance to sprint to the other side of the corridor, just in case – but there's no need, because the puffed-up, angry Thing backs straight through the gate, into the time corridor and off Gallifrey for good. Its telepathic signature distorts and fades as it passes through the Vortex, and Snail keeps yelling for a while after it disappears in case it has any ideas about coming back. He's still going by the time Tagalong and Flabbaduckarusa have joined him under the indigo-violet swirls of the captive Vortex.

"I think it's gone," Flabbaduckarusa says.

A horrible thought strikes Tagalong. "Yes, but if it has..." He swallows against a suddenly dry mouth. Why, oh why didn't he see it before? "Then we've sent it _towards_ the grown-ups."


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Stop running off!

The three Loomlings cluster around the gate in awful silence. Snail wants to tell Tagalong off, but Tagalong's gone so pale that he doesn't have the hearts. Anyway, it was Snail's fault too.

"They'll be all right," Flabbaduckarusa says, but Snail can hear that it's nothing more than a desperate lie.

"It kills people," Tagalong whispers. His eyes are enormous; Snail puts an arm around him, but Tagalong yelps in pain and pulls away.

"We need to go and warn them," Snail decides. After all, they can't just go back to the nursery, can they? It could be ages before the grown-ups on Gallifrey realise that the gate's fixed, and meanwhile the grown-ups beyond the gate are in trouble. They were in trouble even before Snail accidentally set the Thing on them. Warning them is the least he can do.

He's curious, too, but he tries to keep that out of his mind as the desperation in Flabbaduckarusa's thoughts solidifies into fear. He doesn't think Flabbaduckarusa would approve.

Flabbaduckarusa, lips pinched together, shakes his head mutely and moves so that he's between Snail and the gate.

Tagalong makes the barest of nods, leans towards the gate and quavers, "Hello?"

There's no response. He tries again, his voice stronger, then inches closer to the gate and tries yet again. Snail doubts that anyone on the other side can hear them; the Loomlings can't hear the Thing any more, after all. If they want to warn the grown-ups, they need to go through the gate to do it.

He dodges around Flabbaduckarusa and sprints for the gate. The wall of translucent indigo shimmers and contorts as he gets closer to it; he squeezes his eyes tight shut, half-expecting to bounce off it.

Flabbaduckarusa's yells become a distant garble. The floor turns soft and springy under Snail's feet: the air dampens and warms. He doesn't dare to open his eyes. Without warning, the soft ground becomes slippery; he goes flying into something cold and wet that squelches up into his nose and mouth, filling them with wet, grainy _yuck_.

He swallows some by reflex before he manages to haul himself into a sitting position, spitting and pawing at his face until he's wiped most of it off. Then he opens his eyes.

The sparse yellow grass quivers as some small animal darts away from him. A strong breeze tugs at his hair, sending ripples through every muddy puddle like the one he's just fallen into and distorting their off-colour reflections of the heavy grey clouds up above.

The Thing is a dark shape receding on the horizon. There's no noise but the tweeting of alien birds and Flabbaduckarusa's garbled shouts, which are becoming closer and less garbled by the nanosecond. Moments later their originator hurtles through the gate, dragging Tagalong behind him.

"Stop running off," Flabbaduckarusa half-scolds, half-whines.

"No," Snail says, as Tagalong's gaze fixes on the distant Thing. "We've got to find them."

"Yes, but not like this!" Flabbaduckarusa throws his arms as wide as they'll go. "It's enormous!"

He does have a point. Snail trails his hands through the mud and tries to think, but Tagalong's so guilty and scared that it keeps putting him off. He wishes he could go up and hug Tagalong, but Tagalong's in too much pain as it is.

Pain or no pain, it's Tagalong who suddenly says, "I can hear them," and points in the opposite direction to the Thing. The Loomlings share relieved grins, but Tagalong's disappears so fast that Snail wouldn't have believed it was ever there at all if he hadn't seen it. He looks glumly back down at the mud, and has an idea.

The mudball hits Flabbaduckarusa with a squelch; Snail doesn't see where it lands because he's already on his feet and running towards the grown-ups.

"Can't get me!" he yells, and knows it's worked when he hears another splat, an outraged roar from Flabbaduckarusa, and Tagalong trying to laugh and run away at the same time.

Seconds later, another mudball grazes the top of his head, spattering a little on his cheek as it goes, and he's just opening his mouth to call a taunt back to Tagalong for his poor aim when Tagalong yelps and splutters indignantly; Snail turns to see Flabbaduckarusa, grinning enormously, legging it behind a tree for cover. What can he and Tagalong do but give chase?

Pelting one another, laughing and shouting, they just barely remember to head towards the grown-ups. Snail begins to gain on Flabbaduckarusa as his brother stumbles while climbing through a large patch of shrub; they emerge into a circle of spindly bushes surrounding a large, flat area of soft ground. With a yell of, "Ha!", Snail drops a particularly slimy ball down the back of his brother's collar before noticing the grown-ups staring at him in surprise.

There are three of them: a young man with a beard long enough to trail in the mud surrounding his thighs, a white-haired woman and an aghast gentleman in wire-frame glasses, holding a clipboard. They're all _real_ – there's a moment when Snail's not sure of that, but then he catches the buzz and flow of their thoughts and knows that they must be. They've found the grown-ups. It's over.

"I say," says the Beard-Man, at the same time as the elderly woman demands, "Where did you come from?"

"And," Glasses adds, "what have you done to your _clothes_?"

Snail just grins. He's still grinning when Tagalong erupts from the bush behind him, shouts, "Ha!", and something cold and wet slithers down the back of Snail's neck. Then Tagalong stops moving, one hand still holding Snail's collar. "Oh! Hello."

He pauses; Snail hears him go from overjoyed to confused, and then Tagalong asks cautiously, "Why are you all buried in mud?"

Snail doesn't really care why grown-ups do what they do; that's their business, and he's just glad to have found them. That is, until a flurry of faint, deliberately distorted telepathy fills the air above the grown-ups' heads. Snail can't counter whatever the grown-ups are doing to block him well enough to know what they're saying, but he does pick up on one thing that they're trying to hide. He's seen fear a lot since he was born.

He'd never even thought that the grown-ups might be trapped by something besides a broken gate, or that there was anything they couldn't handle with the right equipment. The idea makes him feel a bit sick; he reaches for Flabbaduckarusa's hand, only to find that Flabbaduckarusa's reaching for his as well.

The grown-ups' exchange is over in a matter of seconds. The elderly woman swivels her torso to face them; the mud sucking at her legs makes it hard for her to move properly. Her voice is level, but Snail's seen the fear now and it's impossible to ignore. "Wherever you came from, I assume you can get back there. Please go. Find an adult –"

"But –" Flabbaduckarusa begins.

"I haven't finished speaking. Tell them we need a rescue. You won't get in trouble." This last is probably meant to be reassuring, but Snail can't think of anything _less_ reassuring than grown-ups who need Loomlings to rescue them.

"But we _can't_ ," Flabbaduckarusa says again, as soon as she's finished. "They locked the building before we were born, when the Thing got through. You're the first grown-ups we've seen. And all the Drudges are dead because it was hungry, so we're going to have to help you ourselves."

There's a pause while the grown-ups take this in. Then Glasses leans towards them, peering over his spectacles. "You're from the Looming House. How old are you?"

Flabbaduckarusa looks helplessly at Snail, who guesses, "About two hours?"

"Told you," the beard-man says.

"Oh, shut up, Beadle," the woman snaps. "This is all your fault in the first place." She turns back to the Loomlings. "Are you saying you've no way of contacting an adult?"

"We were sort of hoping you would." Tagalong sounds disgusted. The woman raises an eyebrow at his tone, but doesn't say anything. Perhaps she realises how desperately the Loomlings have been looking for somebody.

"In that case, you _are_ going to have to help us," Glasses says. "Have you names? I'm Quillon, and my colleagues here are Elleira and Beadle."

"I'm Flabbaduckarusa, and that's Tagalong and Snail. We're going to change them," Flabbaduckarusa adds hastily. "We just needed something to call each other."

Quillon nods briskly. "As you can see, we're all a bit stuck, and we're sinking."

"Sinking?" Flabbaduckarusa asks shrilly. Snail knows his brother's wondering what else can go wrong. That doesn't sound helpful to him. It's disappointing that the grown-ups need rescuing, but if they do, well, then he'll just have to do it. They should at least be able to give him ideas.

But they're scared.

"Yes, sinking." Elleira gestures irritably to the mud surrounding her hips. "I'm not standing in this because it's good for the skin, you know. I'm here because young Beadle can't follow a simple navigation program."

"The mapper was out of alignment," Beadle says, in a tone that suggests he's been saying this a lot lately.

"Yes, and since you've now dropped it, it will never work again."

"It was also our communicator and the emergency call beacon for a rescue TARDIS," Quillon interrupts hastily, "so if you can make a new one, then we can all get out of here." He taps his fingers on the back of his clipboard, sizing the three of them up. His gaze lingers on Tagalong's burned hands and Snail's dishevelled hair; finally, he turns to Flabbaduckarusa. "You seem responsible. Do you think you can find your way back to the gate?"

"Of course I can," Flabbaduckarusa says, swelling visibly at the compliment.

Tagalong leans forward and takes Snail's hand, the better to aim his telepathy without accidentally broadcasting to everyone around them. _Do you suppose all grown-ups are this stupid?_

 _I don't know,_ Snail thinks back. Privately, he's glad that Quillon has taken over, but there's no denying that Flabbaduckarusa's an odd choice. _I hope not._

Quillon looks over his glasses at them. "That's very rude, children."

"Sorry," Tagalong says, but he keeps hold of Snail's hand just the same.

"Good. We can show you how to disassemble some of our other equipment to build a new communicator, but we'll need tools, so you'll have to find some."

"Oh!" Suddenly remembering, Snail digs into his pocket and pulls out the toy screwdriver that he stuffed in there before going through the gate. "I've got this; will it do?"

He fidgets as Quillon squints at it. "Hm. Well, it _is_ a toy. Not the most functional tool I've ever seen, but it'll do. I don't suppose you have the rest of the box with you?"

"No; we left it in the Looming House."

Quillon nods. "Flabbaduckarusa should run and fetch it, then."

"Yes, of course," Flabbaduckarusa says, and runs off. As Elleira calls an admonition to be careful, Quillon beckons Snail and Tagalong forward. They edge closer, wary of the soft ground underfoot.

"Now you two. Our equipment is behind those bushes. I want you to bring out everything you can carry – never mind the heavy bits – and put it where we can see it."

They do as they're told. There's not much there: a couple of locked metal boxes, already half-buried in the bog, that turn out to be 'the heavy bits'; a tarpaulin and a small open crate of assorted exciting gadgetry. They can't lift the crate either, so settle for lifting the pieces out of it and bringing them over as fast as they can. Quillon watches closely, directing them to put everything in orderly rows on the tarpaulin. The arrangement doesn't make any sense to Snail, but he supposes Quillon must know what he's doing. Tagalong's not so sure.

"Stupid _and_ nonsensical," he mutters to Snail as Snail staggers past him with an armful of loose wires, and earns himself a glare from Elleira.

On his fifth and final trip Snail notices that Beadle's beard, which was previously only just grazing the top of the mud, is now several inches deep in it. He sneaks a glance at Elleira and Quillon: he's not sure, but they seem a bit lower too.

"How fast are you sinking?" he blurts, before realising that he doesn't really want to know.

Elleira doesn't quite manage to keep the tremor out of her voice as she answers, "About eleven inches an hour."

That's fast, isn't it? Tagalong must think the same, because he stops reorganising the equipment that he's just dumped unceremoniously on the tarpaulin and looks anxiously after Flabbaduckarusa.

"It's all right." Quillon sounds impossibly calm for somebody who's sinking at _eleven inches an hour_. He gestures to his clipboard. "By my calculations, we've got a little under three hours before any of us begin to drown."

 _Three hours_?

"You can do a lot in three hours," Quillon says sternly. Snail must have thought a bit too loudly. "It's only been two and a half hours since you three were born, hasn't it? That's your entire lifespan again and then some. And I'm sure you had to do a lot to find us."

"Well, maybe," Tagalong says doubtfully.

Quillon studies the pair of them for a moment, then looks straight at Snail. "Some of you more than others, perhaps."

That's unfair, Snail thinks, especially considering what happened to Tagalong. He says so: the next thing he knows he's telling Quillon everything, with Tagalong filling in the bits that Snail doesn't know or doesn't want to remember. When they get to the bit where Snail left the nursery, Elleira tuts; when the Drudge gets eaten, Beadle looks fascinated; and when Tagalong tells them about the Loom and the dead baby, and pulls up his top to show his burns, Quillon is horrified.

"And you haven't had them treated at all? Poor boy, you must be in agony!"

Tagalong shrugs. Snail can see that he still doesn't properly remember _before_ being burned. He squeezes Tagalong's hand; Tagalong looks at him in bemusement.

Elleira recovers her composure first, and claps her hands briskly. "All the more reason to get everyone out of here. What've you got on that tarpaulin, then? I can scarcely see over there."

Quillon starts listing things off for her. He's only a few items in when Flabbaduckarusa clatters through the bushes at full tilt, panting and wild-eyed. He's holding the toolkit so tightly that Snail has to prise it out of his fingers as he babbles, "I saw the Thing! It chased me, but I ran and after a bit it stopped following, or at least, I think it did –"

"You _think_ it did?" Tagalong asks urgently. Flabbaduckarusa squeezes his eyes shut and nods.

Snail throws his arms around his brother, who is shaking violently as he clings on to Snail. He shouldn't have let Flabbaduckarusa go without the screwdriver, not when he knew the Thing was out there. If it's followed Flabbaduckarusa back, it'll all be Snail's fault when they get eaten, the Loomlings and the grown-ups too: Beadle keeps touching his hair and even Quillon is breathing deliberately slowly, so Snail doesn't think there's much chance of them being able to fight it off.

Elleira, however, says thoughtfully, "You said it was telepathic?"

The Loomlings all nod.

"Then we'd all have heard it coming if it had followed Flabbaduckarusa, and probably seen it as well if it's as big as you say. I'd wager it's safe enough at present."

She's right. The Thing's telepathic range isn't huge, but it's got to be at least four storeys' worth of the Looming House. That's ages of warning. He squeezes Flabbaduckarusa's shoulders, trying to let him know it's all right. Flabbaduckarusa's grip tightens on Snail's arms, so hard that it hurts, then he takes a big heaving sniff and reluctantly lets go.

"We should still hurry up, though," Elleira says. "Quillon, this is your territory."

Quillon bows his head briefly in her direction. "Of course. The first thing to do is to strip all of this down to get the parts we need –" He gives Flabbaduckarusa an encouraging smile. "– and now we have a toolkit, we can go much faster. Thank you. Now, you and Tagalong take those –" he points to a few of the things on the tarpaulin "– over to Elleira and Beadle, and Snail, bring me that auxiliary receiver and I'll show you what we need from it."

He explains what's needed to Elleira and Beadle while Flabbaduckarusa and Tagalong disperse around the edges of the mudhole. Snail picks up the receiver when Quillon points it out to him, and sits down with it as close to the edge of the mud as he dares.

It's a sphere about two inches in diameter, and deceptively heavy. Snail has to hold it in both hands as he turns it over, looking closely for the case opening. Quillon watches until he's successfully popped the case off to reveal the tightly-packed circuitry inside, then, to Snail's astonishment, begins to give him a proper lesson in how the receiver works. Snail tries to listen, but Quillon's going so _slowly_ , and there's so little time, especially now the Thing's coming. He spends half of the lecture glancing nervously at the horizon and the other half trying to gauge how fast the grown-ups are sinking by looking at Beadle's beard. It's barely been five minutes when Quillon suddenly claps his hands together and Snail nearly jumps out of his skin.

"Am I boring you?" Quillon asks archly.

"No, but we need to hurry up!" Snail points at Beadle, who has already talked Tagalong through dismantling his first digital key. "Like they are."

Quillon follows his gaze, tuts, and turns back to Snail. His voice low, he says, "You know, Beadle's very young. Obviously not as young as you, but he's barely in triple figures."

Snail shrugs, not seeing what this has to do with anything. All grown-ups are impossibly ancient.

"Sit still and shush," Quillon says. "For one minute."

"But we've got to –"

"Sit still."

It's probably the fastest way back to the important stuff, so Snail obeys. He fixes his gaze on the spot where Beadle's beard meets the bog-mud, and waits for Quillon to let him talk again so he can say how _stupid_ this is.

Sullenness quickly turns into boredom. There's no noise except a few birds and the sounds of Tagalong and Flabbaduckarusa being shown _useful_ things too quietly for Snail to hear. The grass is still damp, and the moisture is beginning to seep through his clothes, but despite that the ground is still hard enough to make him sore if he doesn't move about. There's a sharp pebble digging into his bottom. Quillon's put his head back and is examining the darkening sky with a practised calm that only makes Snail more agitated.

It goes on and on. Snail opens his mouth to speak several times: each time, Quillon gives him a sharp look and he closes it again. Finally, after forever, Quillon says, "See? One minute."

"That was never one minute! That was ages!"

"It was one minute," Quillon says firmly. "I should know. When you're young, and when you're scared, you never seem to have enough time. But really, a minute is almost forever, isn't it? There's so much that you can do in a minute. Even more in three hours." He adjusts his glasses. "It would take any one of us adults perhaps twenty minutes to make this beacon. We've got time to teach you properly, and I intend to use it."

"What about the Thing?"

"We'll worry about that if it shows up," Quillon says. "It's rude to stare."

Snail can't help it. Anyway, it's rude not to look at someone when you're talking to them, too. "Aren't you afraid of _anything_?"

"I make a habit of never panicking when there are children around," Quillon says. "Are you ready to learn how to take that apart yet? I can't get myself out of this, you know."

His tone brooks no more argument, not that Snail can think of much to say to that. Snail picks up the screwdriver again, and does his best to put the Thing, the bog and eleven inches an hour out of his mind and follow Quillon's lesson.

Even with Quillon and Elleira's insistence on giving proper lessons, Beadle's beard hasn't sunk much at all before the three Loomlings have got all the pieces the grown-ups want. Snail supposes it's because there are three of them, though he can't help but notice that Tagalong has contributed far more to the pile on the tarpaulin than either he or Flabbaduckarusa have.

The shadows are starting to lengthen as Quillon waves the other two back around to his side of the mud-hole and starts talking them all through rebuilding their stripped components into communicator parts, and the parts into a communicator. He makes it very easy, although Snail suspects that he's simplifying a lot.

Elleira and Beadle spectate for a bit, throwing in advice where needed, but soon get sidetracked into a discussion that Snail couldn't follow even if he wanted to. Quillon ignores them so the Loomlings do too, and keep going as fast as they can.

Tagalong's slowed right down now. He keeps making Quillon stop and go over things that seem obvious to Snail and Flabbaduckarusa, until eventually Flabbaduckarusa snaps, "Are you _stupid_?"

"No, he's not," Quillon says sharply, before Tagalong can retaliate. "He's just had a terrible teacher." He shoots a glare at Beadle; it goes unnoticed in the latter's debate with Elleira. "Nobody told him what he was doing when he was taking things apart, so now he doesn't know what he's doing to put them together, either." He smiles reassuringly at Tagalong. "You'll pick it up... oh, be careful with that wire. If it comes loose unexpectedly it could take your eye out."

"Right," Tagalong says, and manoeuvres his foot on top of it. Quillon throws up his hands in mock despair.

From that point on, Flabbaduckarusa does his best to help Tagalong. He points to things when Quillon mentions them, takes things out of Tagalong's hands to show him how to do them properly, and finishes Tagalong's work when Tagalong's not looking. Snail can see Tagalong getting angrier and angrier as Flabbaduckarusa, interpreting it as frustration, gets more and more helpful; but Snail's won the right to put the components together by dint of owning the screwdriver, so he's got more important things to worry about right now.

With heaps of time to spare – the mud's only up to Beadle's hips – Snail finishes putting the last circuit into the casing. His hands are trembling as he presses the switch to test it. It hums into life, warming slightly in his grasp, and Snail whoops excitedly. They're all going home! Quillon gives a little sigh of relief; Elleira and Beadle stop their bickering to congratulate him; Tagalong and Flabbaduckarusa hug one another and cheer.

The communicator shudders in Snail's hand, whines a bit, then chokes and dies. The Loomlings' cheering comes to an abrupt halt as Snail stares in horror at his useless project.

"Oh, wonderful," Beadle mutters.

"I thought that was rather good for a first attempt," Elleira says. Snail wishes that was reassuring, but he's going to have to do it all again now, and there's even less time –

"I _told you_ you should have let me build it," Flabbaduckarusa whines at Quillon.

Quillon ignores all of them; his focus is entirely on Snail. "Just take it apart and see what went wrong. Everybody makes mistakes; it's what you do with them that counts."

Snail dries his wet eyes on his sleeve and carries his work a bit closer to the edge of the quagmire so that Quillon can see it better. Flabbaduckarusa comes over to take a better look at what he's doing, blocking Snail's view as he does so.

"Is that what's wrong?" He points at something, but Snail can't see what it is because Flabbaduckarusa's hand is in the way. "It doesn't look right."

"You don't even know what it's meant to look like," Tagalong says sourly.

"There's sticky tape on it."

"Oh, Quillon, you didn't," Elleira says.

"Nothing wrong with a little sticky tape," Quillon says.

Snail tugs the communicator away from Flabbaduckarusa's prying fingers and closer to his face. The sunlight has almost completely gone now and he's finding it harder and harder to make things out, but he doesn't think the sticky tape is the problem. As he looks it over, he notices that the battery's changed colour: before, it was a luminous magenta, and now it's a dull greyish-purple. He shows it to Quillon, who mutters something that Snail's not allowed to repeat.

"What's wrong?" Flabbaduckarusa asks, his voice shaking.

"It's dead. If I recall correctly, that was the only battery we had. Tagalong, have you seen another?"

Quillon's sharp question jolts Tagalong out of a glassy-eyed panic. "Another what?" he asks, and shakes his head when Snail shows him. "I've seen lots of red ones of those?"

It takes Quillon a moment to decipher that one. "Oh, I see what you mean. No, that's a laser scanner. Completely different."

Elleira folds her arms over her chest, rubbing them absently. "We've got plenty of matter coils; can't we use those?"

Quillon shakes his head. "The time-space interphase would loop out of control."

"Can't we build it without one?" Beadle asks. He's beginning to shiver in the lowering temperatures. "I'm sure I read a paper about working around the Bartis-Meyin Law of Energy Conservation. One simply reverses the polarity of the neutron flow, then uses percussive maintenance to – yes, what is it?"

Snail lowers his hand. "We're three hours old."

"Oh." Beadle rubs his beard, looking embarrassed. "So you are."

"There's probably one in the Looming House," Elleira muses. "You said one of the Looms was broken up?"

"Yes," says Snail, not failing to notice the way Tagalong tenses at the idea of going back there. "But it's really scary in there."

Tagalong nods mutely. Quillon looks from one Loomling to the next, taking in their solemn expressions, and his face softens.

"We can't make you go. You've all seen things that nobody should have to see, and if you don't want to go back, I understand. But I think that Loom's our best chance for finding the piece we need to fix the communicator and get everyone out of here. If you can be brave for just a bit longer, we'd all be very grateful." A slight smirk. "Even Beadle."

Snail looks at his friends. Flabbaduckarusa's unhappy but determined, a thought pattern that Snail recognises from the last time. He'll come if Snail goes, and that's good, because Snail doesn't want to go alone. Tagalong... Tagalong's eyes are huge and his mouth puckered at the very idea of going back into that room. His thoughts going round and round as he rubs absent-mindedly at his burned arms.

Snail shares a glance with Flabbaduckarusa, who shrugs and makes a valiant attempt at targeted telepathy. _It'd be mean_.

"What'd be mean?" Tagalong snaps. Flabbaduckarusa winces and opens his mouth to defend himself, but Snail has a sudden idea and jumps in with:

"Making you stay here to look after the grown-ups. It'd be mean. They're all boring and I bet they'll make you take samples or something."

He's sure Quillon grins at him. Flabbaduckarusa blinks at Snail for a moment, then adds, "Yes, exactly."

"Oh," Tagalong says. He sounds a bit suspicious, but not enough to not seize his chance. "Well... I don't mind."

"Someone's got to do it," Elleira adds helpfully.

"Yes, someone's got to do it."

"All right, then," Snail says, and gives him the screwdriver. "You stay here and look after them, and we'll go and find a battery." He tugs lightly on Flabbaduckarusa's sleeve, and they hurry off before Tagalong can find his sense of pride and change his mind.

"Be careful!" Elleira calls as they leave.

The two Loomlings hasten back over the bog, Flabbaduckarusa slipping and sliding in the lead. Left, then right, then past yet another thicket... Snail barely recognises the route his brother's taking. The bog looks completely different under a dark, moonless sky; the grass, now more grey than yellow, rises out of gloopy mud-puddles like the spines on the Thing's oily back. He hopes they don't run into the Thing again. How far had Flabbaduckarusa run before he lost it?

And how far have they run now? It feels like they're going on and on, splashing through puddles, circling bushes that spring out of the black like aliens waiting to eat them up. It didn't take them this long to get from the gate to the grown-ups the first time, but Snail can see where Flabbaduckarusa's going; there's a bright pinprick of light on the horizon that can only be the gate.

Funny thing, it's been on the horizon for ages now.

He slows, calling to Flabbaduckarusa. Flabbaduckarusa stops, then immediately disappears with a squawk. Snail tries to stop too, and the next thing he knows his leg has slipped in a patch of mud and he's fallen straight into Flabbaduckarusa, who falls bodily into the mud with a squelch.

Snail carefully stands up and backs away to give Flabbaduckarusa room to get to safety, peering through the dark in frustration. All he can hear are splashes and Flabbaduckarusa's thoughts, both becoming increasingly urgent. He's stuck. Snail, terrified, grabs for him, but Flabbaduckarusa is yelling and thrashing about so much that Snail can't get a grip on him at all. The one time he does, Flabbaduckarusa bats his hand away in the same movement as he grabs for Snail's arm, almost pulling Snail in too.

"Hold still!" Snail roars in frustration. Quivering with the effort, Flabbaduckarusa obeys; Snail grabs his brother's hand and pulls as hard as he can, but he's got no traction on the mud. He has to stop or else pull himself in, and eventually sits down heavily on the bank to think of what else he can do.

"Don't bother," Flabbaduckarusa says, and sniffles. "We're lost anyway. I don't think that's the gate."

Snail stares at him in disbelief. "Why didn't you say so?"

"Because!" Flabbaduckarusa gives an enormous sniff and there's a flash of white as he wipes his nose with the back of his hand. "You always know what to do. It was nice, having you need me for something."

"How silly!" The words are out of Snail's mouth before he can stop them. As Flabbaduckarusa's threatens to cry again, he explains hastily, "I never know what I'm doing. The only reason we got this far is that you and Tagalong helped."

"Oh," Flabbaduckarusa says, after a pause.

"Bufflehead," Snail adds, and draws his knees up to his chest. He doesn't know what to do; doesn't even have the vaguest glimmer of an idea. If he knew where they were then he could go and get the battery, take it to the grown-ups and make sure Flabbaduckarusa got rescued with them, but he can't, because Flabbaduckarusa's got them lost.

How long have they been out here, anyway? He doesn't know any more, and has a sudden vision of Quillon and the others drowning while Tagalong screams for him to hurry up. Maybe even Tagalong will drown eventually, or starve. Maybe they'll become feral children and have to spend the rest of their lives in this grotty old bog and never find the gate again. It's not as if anybody cares about them yet, except Quillon and Elleira and Beadle, and they're all going to die because he and Flabbaduckarusa are so useless.

He's so busy feeling sorry for himself that he doesn't notice the ground shaking beneath him until Flabbaduckarusa yells and staggers backwards, falling over into the mud with a horrible squelch. Snail, jolted into action, grabs for Flabbaduckarusa again, but he's far too slow. The Thing – no, _a_ Thing, it's far bigger than their Thing ever was – leans over his head and swats one massive paw at Flabbaduckarusa, who screams even louder and tries to roll out of the way. The Big Thing almost treads on Snail as it lumbers closer to the mud's edge, its enormous feet sinking deep into the silty ground; Snail rolls underneath it and grabs hold of its tail as it clears him, pulling and pulling at it until it hits him in the face, sending him flying into a bush two feet away.

Its branches crack in quick succession, stabbing into him as he falls. His entire left side is oddly numb until he leaps to his feet, then it's suddenly a blaze of agony as the world tilts and his bruised leg gives out under him, forcing him to grab onto the bush to keep himself upright. He can't fall over now: the Big Thing is still tormenting Flabbaduckarusa, who's screaming and thrashing about, sinking ever deeper into the bog. Snail has tottered two steps towards him when another Thing comes charging out of the bushes. It's _their_ Thing; woozy and bleeding and telepathically screeching, and it's coming right at him, wailing and keening as the Big Thing harries Flabbaduckarusa. Snail backs away, but he's forgotten the bush behind him and gets stuck in its branches. The Little Thing only just checks its charge in time to avoid doing the same, but that doesn't stop it from moving slowly forwards as Snail scrabbles to get away from confining branches of the bush.

Flabbaduckarusa suddenly goes quiet, audibly at least; telepathically, he's screaming all the louder, and he's stuck, and he can't _breathe_ , and Snail can't get to him because the Little Thing's put its nose right in his face, and it stinks of mud and Drudgewood and Gallifrey and it's _licking_ him, trailing slimy blue saliva all over the bruises the Big Thing's tail made when it hit him –

There's a splash and a deep sucking noise that must come from Flabbaduckarusa's mudhole, but Snail can't see what it is because the Little Thing's still licking his face. He shoves it out of the way when he hears a thump and gasp a moment later, and to his surprise the Thing backs away and lets him get out of the bush and crawl to Flabbaduckarusa.

Flabbaduckarusa's lying on his front, covered in mud from head to foot. The Big Thing is licking him like the small one did Snail, its tongue moving in slow, steady swoops as Flabbaduckarusa coughs and struggles to get up. Snail grabs Flabbaduckarusa's collar and drags him out of the way, but the Big Thing follows them as he hauls his brother to safety. That's when he realises the Little Thing is following him too. It goes over to the Big Thing; the two of them blend into one dark smudge against the landscape as as Snail helps Flabbaduckarusa to sit up, bangs him on the back a couple of times, and asks anxiously, "Are you all right?"

"I think so." Flabbaduckarusa sounds almost as surprised as Snail feels. He coughs again and rubs a hand across his face, wiping away mud and Thing-spit in equal quantities. "It just sort of scooped me up and dropped me here. I might get bruises, but I'm not dead. What about you?"

Snail's suddenly thankful for the dark. Flabbaduckarusa worries too much anyway, without Snail telling him that it hurts every time he moves or even breathes with his chest at the wrong angle. He settles for, "I'm not dead either."

The Things are still there, merged into one dark shape against the darkness. Snail's sure they're staring at him and Flabbaduckarusa, but they haven't attacked again. Even their telepathic signals are calmer; still unnatural and alien, but being near them isn't making Snail feel sick any more.

"They don't look much like they're going to eat us, do they?" Flabbaduckarusa says. He cocks his head, inspecting the Things. "You know what? I think it's a baby."

Snail's about to call him a bufflehead again when he sees what Flabbaduckarusa means. From the way their silhouettes are moving, it looks like the Big Thing's licking the little one's wounded head with the same weirdly gentle care as the Little Thing was using on Snail just now.

"It got lost." Flabbaduckarusa speaks slowly; Snail can hear him working it out as he goes. "And it went through the gate and the forcefield must've triggered too late, so it couldn't get back. And then it must've got scared like we did."

"And then it killed all the Drudges and that baby Tagalong saw, and tried to kill us too," Snail counters in disbelief. "It might be a baby, but it's still horrible."

"It might not have been trying to kill us," Flabbaduckarusa says. "We just assumed that."

"Because it ate the Drudges!"

"The Drudges were made of wood, though. That needs a completely different type of teeth. I saw it on a documentary while I was waiting for you in the nursery." Flabbaduckarusa starts pulling up the grass underneath him, frowning down at it as he thinks. "They're big enough to eat trees, aren't they? So maybe it got hungry, and when it couldn't find any trees in the Looming House it ate the Drudges instead. It wouldn't know any better, would it? It's not as if it's intelligent."

The Big Thing snorts and begins to plod towards them. Snail tries to shuffle backwards, but Flabbaduckarusa jumps to his feet, pulling Snail with him. When Snail nearly falls over again, Flabbaduckarusa plants a hand in the small of Snail's back and propels him towards the Things. He doesn't remove his hand until they're surrounded by the hot, grassy guff of the Big Thing's breath; then he immediately reaches up to touch the Big Thing's face.

"What are you _doing_?" Snail hisses, as the Thing lowers its head to meet Flabbaduckarusa's outstretched hand.

"Well, it can't talk, can it?" Flabbaduckarusa slowly rubs the Thing's nose, then wrinkles his own. "That feels weird. Go on, you try."

Snail's half-convinced that his brother's gone mad, but nevertheless he lays a hand lightly on the Big Thing's nose. It _does_ feel weird: it's wrinkled and leathery underneath a thin film of moisture, and as he makes contact a warm, grateful sensation fills his mind. It's a little clearer and a lot friendlier than the Baby Thing's telepathy was, but still not right... not _natural_.

The grown-up Thing huffs in amusement, and Snail realises too late that he's let it see that impression of it. He's lucky it didn't take offence, he thinks, and pats it gently with his free hand in apology. The Big Thing coos; it's realised he's a baby. Snail isn't sure whether to be glad or offended that it thinks he's so childish. Glad, maybe. Maybe that's why it's not eating him: because he's too young.

He claps his free hand over his nose as the Thing snorts humid, grassy air all over him again. A moment later, it wheezes and projects an image of itself eating trees.

Snail refuses to let Flabbaduckarusa catch his eye.

Why was it following them, then, if not to eat them? The Thing-eating-trees vanishes, replaced by the grateful feeling again and a picture of the Baby Thing. Thank you for the baby?

Oh. Snail immediately feels guilty. Well, they _did_ help send the Baby Thing home, even if it wasn't exactly intentional. And at least the Big Thing seems to find the notion of the Loomlings running in terror from its baby funny.

Flabbaduckarusa closes his eyes, the better to concentrate. It takes Snail a second to work out what his brother's trying to say, but when he does he takes Flabbaduckarusa's spare hand in his own and does his best to help,

If they don't manage to convey gratitude then at least they don't accidentally insult it either, and the Thing seems to get the gist of their clumsy joint telepathy. It huffs again; to both their surprise, an image of the three grown-ups comes into their minds. The grown-ups! Snail had almost forgotten them, what with Flabbaduckarusa nearly drowning and then thinking they were going to get eaten, but now all his worry comes crashing back. How long have they been out here for? He looks at Flabbaduckarusa, who stares back with wide eyes.

The Thinn follows up its image with a series of bushes and puddles that they eventually interpret as directions.

"Oh!", Flabbaduckarusa says. "No, we've already found them," and he makes a picture of the gate instead.

The Thing is bemused – at least, 'bemused' is the closest match Snail can think of – but then it noses the Baby Thing, which drops its head to the ground, and there's... it's not an image so much as a sensation. I, you, there...

Snail and Flabbaduckarusa look helplessly at one another.

"It can carry us?" Flabbaduckarusa suggests. Snail shakes his head.

"Can't be. It didn't offer to carry us to the grown-ups, did it?" And besides, it's all spiky, but he buries that thought as deep as he can so as not to hurt its feelings.

The Thing signals yes, then shows them a rock, then mud, then a rock again. It takes the two Loomlings a long time to work that one out: the ground is harder by the gate, and therefore safer for Thing-kind. Maybe that's how the baby one got lost in the first place, if it ran off somewhere its grown-up couldn't follow.

The grown-up Thing coos at them again, and the Baby Thing keens a little in embarrassment. It's still got its head down, as though it's waiting for them to climb on; Snail bows to it a bit awkwardly and tugs Flabbaduckarusa away.

"I know," his brother says gloomily. "It's going to hurt like anything."

Said aloud like that, it's an awful reason to let everyone die, and it's not as if they have time to waste any more. Snail swallows. "It's got its spines down. We might be all right. We've got to _try_."

"I knew you'd say that," Flabbaduckarusa says heavily, and turns back to the Big Thing. "I suppose you're right."

He's not in any hurry to get on, though, so Snail crawls carefully up the Baby Thing's wide, flat face to the top of its head. Its spines are surprisingly pliant; not soft exactly, but not as cruel as the Big Thing's look either. He tries to sit astride it, but the pain in his bruised left leg rears from a dull ache into new agony, and in the end he has to kneel behind Flabbaduckarusa, wrapping his arms around his brother for support. The Things stand patiently until the Loomlings stop moving about on the Baby Thing's back, then set off at a jolting, limping gallop.

The night air whips through Snail's hair as he bounces uncontrollably on the Thing's back, holding on to Flabbaduckarusa for dear life. He can't see at all, pain arcs through his whole body with each bounce, and he doesn't dare to ask the Things to slow down because the grown-ups are all dying, yet he's got no idea whether the sounds coming out of his mouth are screams or laughter.

He knows when they've arrived at the gate because its soft bluish glow illuminates the bog around it for several hundred yards. The Things lurch to a halt; Snail lets go of Flabbaduckarusa and half-jumps, half-falls to the ground. Flabbaduckarusa jumps down after him and dashes through the gate, leaving Snail to pull himself upright using the Big Thing as a prop and try to find some way to say thank you.

It nudges him towards the gate as he's trying to find the right way to express himself to it. He gives up, bows to it, and limps after Flabbaduckarusa.

The bright artificial lights in the Looming House blind him. Blinking away light spots and rubbing his eyes, he feels his way along the wall to the empty Looming room, where he can hear Flabbaduckarusa sorting frantically through the remains of the Loom.

He stops when he sees Snail in the doorway. "You said you weren't hurt!"

"I said I wasn't dead," Snail says. "I'm quite a lot hurt." Sensing that Flabbaduckarusa's about to start crying, or worse, fussing, he adds hastily, "I can't get fixed until we get the grown-ups out, and nor can Tagalong. Come on."

Flabbaduckarusa's lip wobbles a bit, then he takes a deep breath and says, "All right. You start over there."

The Looming House is oddly still without the Baby Thing crashing about everywhere; the two Loomlings clamber all over the wreckage in search of the elusive purple battery, and there's not a single sound except the ones they make themselves.

It's Flabbaduckarusa who thinks it first, and he voices the thought moments later. "How are we going to get back? We might get lost again."

"Yes." Snail crawls into a jumble of debris in case there's something useful hidden under it, patting around in search of odd shapes. "Maybe we could find a torch somewhere. You didn't have any trouble when it was still daytime, did you?"

"No." Flabbaduckarusa frowns at the small, neatly organised piles in front of him, then scoops the next lot of bits towards him and starts over. A moment later, his triumphant whoop indicates that he's found it. "Got one!"

"Oh, good," Snail says, and carefully crawls out of his junk pile again. "We still need a torch, though."

"There was one in the toolbox," Flabbaduckarusa says. "I bet there's another in the nursery somewhere." Without waiting for a reply, he hands Snail the battery and runs off.

He returns a few minutes later, grinning and waving a Loomling-sized torch. "I think that was the easiest thing I've ever done."

"Let's go, then." Snail grins back at him, reaches for his hand, and leads him back through the gate.

The cold, damp night air hits him the instant he emerges into the bog; he gasps and shivers, curling his fingers up inside Flabbaduckarusa's warm hand. Even in the dim light thrown out by the gate, the only thing he can see before Flabbaduckarusa turns the torch on is that the Things have gone, hopefully to somewhere with harder ground and more trees.

The torch beam isn't strong or wide. Whoever designed the torch clearly wasn't expecting it to be used outside of a nursery shadow-puppet show. Nothing looks familiar in isolation under its spotlight, and after last time neither Snail nor Flabbaduckarusa wants to take the risk of picking a direction at random.

It's only when he starts listening properly for them that Snail realises he can't hear the grown-ups this time, not like he could before. A horrible lump settles into the pit of his stomach. They're too late.

He doesn't know what to do now. He can't even seem to cry properly, although he's distantly aware of his eyes welling up. It's not _fair_. He's done everything, and he was so close –

Flabbaduckarusa squeezes his hand. He's pale, but he looks surprisingly determined for a Loomling who's just lost his grown-ups. "I can hear someone crying."

"Sorry," Snail says, and wipes his nose with the back of his hand.

"Not you," Flabbaduckarusa says. "Not Tagalong, either. It's... it's Beadle!" He leaps forwards, dragging Snail with him. "Come on!"

Ignoring the torch beam, barely avoiding several mud-holes, they sprint for Beadle's telepathic signal. Snail's got no idea what a grown-up is doing crying like a baby, but he doesn't care, either – it's Beadle, and Snail can hear him, and that means Beadle's still alive.

His leg's about to give out again when at long last there's a shout, and Tagalong comes charging out of the bushes to meet them.

"Hurry up!" He grabs Snail's arm and tows him towards the bushes with surprising strength.

Flabbaduckarusa breaks through the final bushes and collapses into an exhausted heap on the ground. Between pants, he says, "We got lost. It was my fault... but the Thing saved us. It's really nice after all; it's only a baby, and it was scared, and –"

His voice trails off as the torchlight lands on the mudhole. For an instant Snail thinks the grown-ups have disappeared completely, but he's wrong; their heads are still visible, tilted back at ghastly angles trying to breathe. The mud's covering Elleira's mouth already, lapping up into her nostrils every time she takes a breath; Quillon and Beadle are only a little better off. If they open their mouths, the mud will get in, and then they'll die, and it'll all have been for nothing.

Beadle's stopped crying now, but his eyes are open and following them, so Snail knows he's still alive. He makes eye contact with Beadle for an instant; that's enough for Beadle to say _Thought you might hear that. Get on with it, will you?_

"I don't care where you've been," Tagalong snaps tearfully at Flabbaduckarusa, and starts digging through Snail's pockets. "Where is it?"

"Flabbaduckarusa's got it," Snail says, and dashes to get the communicator as Tagalong turns on his brother.

If he looks at the grown-ups then he might start crying, so he focuses on the communicator instead. It's better-made now; the sticky tape's gone, for one thing. Tagalong must have rebuilt it while they were away. Snail hands it over and Tagalong snaps the battery in like a pro.

"I've been practising," he says in answer to their astonishment, and turns the communicator on. It beeps gently and starts broadcasting a telepathic signal; Snail lets out a breath that he didn't know he'd been holding.

Barely a second has passed before the wind picks up around them and an impossibly familiar rending noise fills the air not six feet away from where Tagalong is standing. The Loomlings back away from the landing site, drawing together instinctively. As it fades into view under the torchlight, the TARDIS changes; the first pass, it's a box, the second, a tree – but a tree'll _sink_ , Snail thinks, and it clearly agrees, because on the third and final pass it's a bright yellow bush almost identical to the one next to it. It's even damp from the rainfall.

The branches rustle. A gigantic green and gold feather emerges, then the helmet it's attached to, and then the long, surprised face beneath it. "I say! Children?"

"You need to transmat them out of the bog," Flabbaduckarusa says, and points. "They're sinking."

The man's gaze follows Flabbaduckarusa's finger, and his eyes widen. "Right away! Come in, all of you." His head disappears into the TARDIS again, and he can be heard barking orders at his crew as the Loomlings follow him in.

Inside, the TARDIS's console room is white and businesslike, filled with six people who all look up in varying degrees of surprise and horror as the Loomlings crawl through the bush opening and crowd together nervously.

"Goodness, what grubby children," one of the women says.

"Never mind them," Silly Hat snaps. "Get those people in here." He looks down at the Loomlings as his crew hasten to operate the transmat. "I'm Captain Margarelon, and that's Yalae, Thidias, Zavary, Karis and Orsic."

"I'm Flabbaduckarusa, and this is Snail and Tagalong."

Margarelon raises a disapproving eyebrow. "I see."

There's a bright blue flash and the three grown-ups are suddenly standing in the console room, gasping for breath; Elleira collapses even before the crew cluster around to check on them. Snail makes to go and see for himself, but Margarelon plants himself in the way. "They're safe. Now tell me, where did you three come from? You're a long way from school."

"We weren't in school," Tagalong says, "we've just been born."

"Get off me!" Quillon snaps as he extricates himself from the attentions of the TARDIS crew. "I assure you, I'm fine." He gestures at Elleira, who is still unmoving on the floor. "She needs help regenerating; worry about her. Captain, these Loomlings are astounding."

He explains. At times, he makes everything sound so incredible that even Snail isn't sure he believes it, and the captain obviously thinks Quillon's exaggerating a bit, but Snail finds he doesn't really care whether Margarelon believes them or not. Tagalong takes his hand when it starts to get boring and leads him off to play hide-and-seek in the TARDIS corridors, and Flabbaduckarusa joins them not long after; the next thing they know of it is when Quillon comes to find them.

"Is Elleira all right?" Snail asks as soon as he sees him.

"Fine," Quillon says, and smiles. "They couldn't save the body, but you got her out just in time to save the person, and that's what's really important. And we're going home. They've closed the rift and moved all our equipment for us, and I called the council myself; your families will be waiting when we get back."

"Really?" Flabbaduckarusa asks, a little timidly. Snail can't blame him; in all the excitement, he'd forgotten that he's going to have to meet his family today. That's a completely different sort of adventure.

"Really," Quillon says. His face turns stern again, but they're beginning to recognise Quillon's fake-stern face now. "However. First things first. You all need medical attention, and you are also all _filthy_."

It's true: Tagalong's the cleanest, but even he's got the odd mud spatter, and Flabbaduckarusa and Snail are both caked in it.

Quillon's not too clean himself, what with having been sinking in a bog. When Snail opens his mouth to mention this, Quillon points in the direction of the bath-house. "If I have to, so do you. Come on."

Flabbaduckarusa runs off at once. Sighing and dragging their feet, Snail and Tagalong follow as slowly as they possibly can.

"I hope it's not all going to be baths and school," Tagalong mutters.

Quillon, who has annoyingly sharp ears, laughs. "It is for a while. But don't worry; it gets better."


	5. Epilogue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "I'm bored. Are you bored?"

Their classroom is beige.

That's the most noteworthy thing about it, Snail thinks as they're ushered to desks by the big windows. Granted, it has beautiful blue curtains and the pupils themselves, in their Chapter-coloured play suits, do a little to liven it up; and it's hardly a _dull_ beige, formed into pillars and arches with gargoyles and carvings artfully arranged. But mostly, it's beige.

Their tutor is quite beige, too; not his clothing, but the way he stands and speaks. His voice has a faintly nasal quality to it as he wanders about the classroom correcting people's work, explaining the theory behind the circuits they're building in quiet, measured tones.

Snail, with the benefit of experience, completes his work before the tutor even makes it halfway around the classroom. Behind him Tagalong has finished even faster, and is now using parts of his toolkit to dismantle other parts of his toolkit and see how they work. It's all very... beige.

Flabbaduckarusa finishes his last circuit and starts leafing through the textbook, looking for something harder to do.

It's a glorious day outside: sunny and warm, the flora bursting with vibrancy from a recent rainstorm. A breeze blows in through the open window, ruffling Snail's hair. It carries a heady, exciting scent, and as he turns to get another whiff of it, something bright and glinting in the distance catches his eye. There's so much out there to see...

A loud snap sounds behind him as Tagalong shuts the casing on his screwdriver. Moments later, it's followed by a soft, "Uh-oh."

Snail leans back. "What's the matter?"

Tagalong holds up his level. "I've lost the laser bit for this."

The girl he's sitting next to looks up from her work long enough to say, "You haven't lost it. You just put it in your screwdriver, I saw you," and sniff disapprovingly.

Tagalong's face falls. "Oh."

That breeze is blowing again. What does it smell of? Fruit? Animal droppings? Fresh-cut grass? A particular flower, or lots of them all mixed together? Snail pushes experimentally at the window; the gap widens with ease.

Their tutor is getting closer. Snail nudges Flabbaduckarusa. "I'm bored. Are you bored?"

"Not really," his brother says, and goes back to his work.

" _I_ am," Tagalong says.

"Only, there's this smell I don't recognise, and I can see something on the horizon..."

"Isn't this all a bit similar to how you ended up watching the Drudge die and crying on a transmat pad?" Flabbaduckarusa asks.

Snail ignores him, focussing on Tagalong. "I'm _really_ bored."

Tagalong nods. "And I'm going to get into trouble for taking my toolkit apart, aren't I?"

"Very probably."

"Very improbably," the girl mutters. "Truancy, on the other hand –"

Snail ignores her, too. "Come on, then."

Tagalong pockets his ruined screwdriver and crawls under his desk. Snail shoves the window wide open and climbs through it as silently as he can. It's not very far to the ground; he lands in a flowerbed and moves hastily out of the way before Tagalong follows him.

Scarcely able to believe they've done it, they grin at one another for a moment before Tagalong says, "So where are we going? Smell or horizon?"

Snail looks around. The wind has dropped, and he can't see the horizon through the flowers he's crouched in. Well, they can't go back _in_ , so that leaves only one thing to do.

He picks a direction at random, and starts running.


End file.
